My remembrance of Apollo 11

When I entered today’s date in my day log, I had a thought – “there is something special about today…mmm…what is it?”. After a few seconds, I remembered – today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. It was 53 years ago today, and I have three memories relating to this that standout in my mind.

The first memory is the actual date. I was six years old, but my brothers and I had been watching all of the coverage on NBC, with Frank McGee as the anchorman, and sponsored by Gulf Oil (there was a Gulf logo attached to the anchor desk – outrageous by today’s standards). Anyway, it was late at night when the event happened (10:53 pm EST), I was living in Texas, so we were on Central time. The TV image was black and white and grainy. We had been watching for a long time, then Armstrong exited the Lunar Module and started down the ladder. To me, though, it seemed like he was standing on that ladder for at least 10 minutes. I finally got up from the couch, announced that I was going to bed, and left the room. I did not see the final descent on the ladder – but I WAS only six years old….

My second memory is working at NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There were a lot of events for the 25th anniversary in 1994, and one of them was a reunion at the Gilruth Rec Center on-site. The Apollo 11 astronauts were scheduled to appear, and I decided to go. The crowds were huge, and I never could get closer than about 5 feet to Armstrong/Aldrin/Collins – there were so many people who wanted to meet them. We did get commemorative pins for the anniversary at work.

The final memory was attending a banquet sponsored by the organization Spaceweek, originally started by a NASA employee by the name of Dennis Stone (now called World Space Week). I don’t remember if this was on the 25th anninversary or not (it was probably earlier). During the banquet, a film clip was shown of a speech by President John F. Kennedy on going to the Moon. The speech was at Rice Stadium in Houston, part of Rice University, a private university. The part of the speech that most people have heard is “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”. But before those words, Kennedy lists several difficult achievements (climbing mountains, flying across the ocean), then says “Why does Rice play Texas? Not because it is easy, but because it is hard!” I fell out of my chair laughing at this line! I went to the University of Texas when Texas played Rice in football, and we never lost to them when I was there. Indeed, Texas lost to Rice only once, maybe twice in their last 30-40 games, so this was a great bit in the speech, but I had never heard it until that banquet. 

As a former NASA employee and still working aerospace engineer, I look back at those events with pride that I can say “I was there”, and that later I was able to be a part of the great organization that made that event possible. May we all have good memories to look back to in our lives… 

The way ahead for RSS and podcasting

Dave Winer has released some new tools/apps using RSS this week, and referenced some recent posts on podcasting concerning innovation in that space. Both of these deserve some review and context.

The RSS tools Dave initially demonstrated showed mailbox-reader styles of displaying the content of a RSS feed. Next, Dave talked about two-way RSS as a method to connect outliners with other publishing systems. I voiced an opinion that I did not understand why RSS needed to be involved. With the Twitter + Markdown + RSS unveiling, my view of “the way ahead” is becoming a little clearer. A tool is used to create tweets which contain Markdown markup. Those tweets are sent to Twitter. At the same time, a RSS feed of the tweets is created containing Markdown markup. Finally, a feed reader app is consuming that RSS feed and rendering the Markdown markup in the presentation of the RSS feed. Now, where is the value added by this workflow/system? Twitter is not making use of the enhanced RSS feed, but another app is using those features. And – those features are enabled by the use of a namespace (the source namespace), a feature in RSS that has been there for a long, long time. This is a demonstration that new apps can be built around RSS and using RSS. Now, what else could be done with this RSS feed? Well, at some point, who needs Twitter? Someone could create an app or service that uses the RSS feed as the content container and notifies users when the feed has been updated. Historically, feed reader apps do this when you start the app (highlight new entries), or rivers of news display the new items at the top of the page. But it could be done in a much quicker manner, perhaps using some other protocol like Micropub/Microsub or XMPP. Dave Winer has written about this in 2016 (The Internet’s Twitter), 2011 (fractional horsepower Twitter feed), 2009 (Fractional Horsepower Twitters), again in 2009 (A Billion Twitters). I also wrote a series of posts in 2016 where I also put forward that RSS could be the basis of an open messaging system.

Now, I will turn to podcasting. In the past week, Michael Mignano wrote about the lack of innovation in podcasting. Dave Winer commented that this is not the case. Alberto Betella then had an excellent reply to Mignano, pointing to the work Adam Curry has done on his Podcasting 2.0 initiative, supporting micropayments and other cool features. Again, the vehicle for innovation was using the RSS namespace feature. This is how the rest of the world can overcome the juggernauts of Spotify and others (which I have written about here, here, and here).

So – nothing keeping people from being innovative here – let’s get to work then!

What does “two-way RSS” mean?

I read Dave Winer’s post on Two-way RSS earlier today, and I agree with the concept (publishing tools should allow other editors to create content), but I am not understanding referring specifically to RSS. In the Micro.blog site, a user can publish to a timeline from a RSS feed. However, all the editing in that context occurs in the tool creating the RSS feed. In past posts, Dave Winer has advocated for publishing tools to allow other editors to create content for that publishing tool. I am just having difficulty seeing how allowing “inbound RSS” solves the problem.

Demo of OPML Includes feature in opmlPackage

Dave Winer released an update to his opmlPackage NPM module in May 2022, adding a feature to be able to include other OPML files within an OPML file. I wanted to create a demo of this feature and show the outlines within a web app. I combined code from the outlineBrowser toolkit to create an Express application demonstrating this feature. A live demo is available here – check it out! Comments and suggestions welcome on the Github repo. Ken Smith and Frank McPherson were collaborators on this demo, I appreciate their input!

How easy should it be to create a website?

I read this in a post by Ton Ziljstra today, referencing a conversation between Ton, Aaron Parecki, and Tantek Celik. I think the correct answer is “it depends on what you want”. Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik are recognized as the co-creators of IndieWeb.org, and leading figures in the IndieWeb movement. The context of the question from Ton’s post is that you can do it on social media silo sites, but what about on the open web? I think that Tantek and Aaron would like to be able to see this happen on the open web, but they mentioned a third party silo (Linktree) as a solution.

I think that people like to get stuff for free. They like to access web services for free. So when someone thinks “I would like to have a website”, their first thought may be to look to a free service. However, in many cases, they do not “own their data“. They may not even own their own URL. To own your data, to own your URL, has a cost. It can be a small cost, but there is a cost. I would say that creating a site on WordPress.com, and paying a fee to have your own URL and to not have ads on your site, is the simplest way to have a site and own your data and URL. To totally own your web presence requires a little more cost and effort (I wrote a book on how to do it!), but again this is totally doable. Ton says he would create a small site writing HTML in Notepad. He could, but then he would need web hosting and a URL (see my book for how to do this cheaply!). Again, it comes back to the answer “it depends on what you want”. If a person is willing to let another site host their words for free – go for it! If you want to have more control, host it yourself, or pay for a site you control (like Micro.blog or other hosting sites).

Using OPML to organize information for use

Recently, Ken Smith shared an example of a directory of activities to do during a wedding weekend (primarily for attendees not familiar with the area). I recently started a OPML directory of sorts on Oregon elections. Using the drummer.this.how feature from Dave Winer, these directories can be easily reviewed by others. I also recently created a Github repo to collect thoughts on organizing information for use, but it is not in OPML format (although it could be…)

In the early days of OPML, some people were trying to organize podcast directories using OPML files. The idea was that someone could be the maintainer of a directory on a topic, and that file could be included as a folder/directory within a larger directory structure. After playing with the new includes feature in opmlPackage, I started thinking about this again. My impression is that many people who post lists of things do so with the idea of sharing, but the reuse of that sharing is difficult. However, if the list was in an OPML file, this would lend itself to reuse/sharing/remixing. If you had a group of experts who could summarize/curate information/resources for a set of topics in OPML, this could be the basis of a larger work which could be updated at anytime by any of the experts (see Ken Smith’s “Beyond griping” post for more info). As I mentioned in this post, maybe starting a little “beachhead” for experimentation would be in order. Watch this space for more details!

Playing with includes in opmlPackage

This afternoon, I spent some time experimenting with opmlPackage from Dave Winer, focusing on the new feature to include other OPML files within an OPML file. The includes feature is only part of the Node version of the package (other features can be used in a browser). I changed the OPML file that had example includes to use three reading list files that I had in OPML format. I then changed the demo script to add logic to write out the new outline as a file (you can see it in this Gist) and ran it locally on my laptop. Finally, I created another copy of the OPML client to display the new outline (you can see it here). Looks like the includes feature is working fine!

Who is running to represent you?

As I posted yesterday, with primaries wrapping up, the candidates for the major parties are being chosen. Some candidates will run as an independent (like Betsy Johnson in the Oregon governor’s race). For most, if not all, states in the United States, the state office of Secretary of State is responsible for running elections within a state. These offices have been working to be able to provide unofficial results as soon as an election concludes. To find this, search for “secretary of state yourstatename elections” to start. Oregon has an excellent site, and your state probably does as well. Check it out!

Who represents you?

With the primary elections wrapping up across the nation, you might have a question – who is my representative? At the state level, a voter has a state representative and a state senator (except for states that have a unicameral legislature (one chamber, not two)). At the federal level, a voter has a US House representative, and two US Senators. But with redistricting going on as part of the 2022 elections, someone different might be representing you.

How to find out? The Oregon Legislature has a page to allow you to enter your address and find out who your current representative are (searched on “how to find my representative in Oregon”). Next, you might do a search on “yourstatename redistricting”. For me in Oregon, this lead to a website for the Oregon Legislature on changes made for redistricting. This site also had links to a GIS site with PDFs for Oregon state House and Senate districts, and US House districts. From the earlier page, I could find my state House and Senate district, and was able to download the map. In a few minutes, I had all the information I needed.

Next step – who is running for office this fall? Tune in soon!