Announcing the Media Feed Project

In a recent post, I commented on an idea from Dave Winer on providing a definitive list of RSS feeds for new organizations, and trying to get universities involved. I decided to take some action on my own, and created the Media Feed Project website and Github repo. The content in the OPML files at the Github repo are from my prior work on a news site called FullBlastNews.com. If anyone has RSS feed lists for news organizations, I would be interested in getting a copy. Let me know!

 

Want to help creating RSS reading lists for news orgs?

This morning, I saw a tweet from Dave Winer responding to a Emily Bell and Aron Pilhofer thread on making news story data available for public understanding. Dave made the following comment:

Emily, Aron — I’ve followed the other thread. Interesting. Here’s something useful that could help right away. A collection of RSS feeds from news orgs, maintained, with metadata. Something a group of j-school students, maybe even from different unis, could do. 😉

I added this to the thread:

I have a start at this, see http://andysylvester.com/files/reading_lists/…, these lists are used by River5 to power http://fullblastnews.com

Several years ago, I created lists for print media, news networks, video from news networks, and collections on other topics for a demonstration site called FullBlastNews.com. It was meant to show off River4 (at the time) and use of tabs to switch between different news rivers. Some of the navigation is having some problems now, but the rivers still run….

I am publishing my reading lists/rivers lists/RSS lists URL to help jump start this, I am not sure if Aron or Emily or Dave will take any action, but I will be following this conversation to see where it leads.

 

Is good code boring?

Juraj Malenica writes saying “You should develop boring code”. His post highlights the following:

  • Make your code readable
  • Keep your code predictable
  • Your code is your documentation

If we take these as attributes of “boring code”, are these also attributes of “good code”? Let’s take a look.

Code readability (the ability to understand a source code function) is a good one. For most of my career, I have been working with existing code bases, and ability to understand what has been done before is very important. Working in the avionics industry, requirements and traceability go a long way towards helping understanding legacy software. If this is not available, avoiding the use of difficult-to-understand coding techniques can enhance readability.

In Juraj’s post, code predictability covers naming conventions for parameters/functions/files. For the projects I have worked on, coding standards help to define these conventions. Juraj mentioned a Python standard, there are many available.

Finally, code as documentation is a good goal. If there is no other project documentation, the source code should contain all the information necessary for another developer/engineer to pick up the code and add new features.

After this review, I would say these “boring” elements are also included in code that would be considered “good”. Is this everything needed? No (it is necessary, but not sufficent), but this is a good start.

How can we work together on the open web and on software development

I have been in several conversations in the last week (voice and email) where the concept of “working together” in software development came up, and several threads emerged:

  • how the original developer doesn’t/shouldn’t have to do everything – others can contribute (to me, a key concept in open source)
  • how interested/engaged users can be an important force in the direction in which a software application or tool goes forward

Dave Winer has written about this many times:

I have tried to follow that second point in several ways:

I am getting ready to start working in the computer music area again after a long absence, and I am reviewing available tools to see if they fit the areas I am interested in. In that way, I am trying to practice the concepts of working together as I have outlined above.

Anyone want to work together with me? Let me know!

Is Agile “over”?

A recent Forbes article by Kurt Cagle talks about whether the end of Agile has been reached. One quote at the top of the article was a key one:

This was no longer a methodology. It had become a religion, and like most religions it really didn’t make that much sense to the outsider – or even to the participants, when it got right down to it.

If anyone using Agile concepts has gotten to the state mentioned above, I agree that “it’s over!”. We are using Scrum at my workplace, and we have done some streamlining of the overall practice to meet our needs. So far, I would say it is working well for us. However, if I ever see the “hockey stick” mentioned at the beginning of this article, or any “religious practices”, I’ll be raising my hand to say “WAIT A MINUTE!”….

The music matters

The music matters…

When a church choir works to make sure that everyone is singing the same rhythms and notes, it’s because… the music matters…

When vocalists and instrumentalists work on phrasing, dynamics, cutoffs, entrances, it’s because the music matters…

When you feel moved by a song, a symphony, live or recorded, the music matters….

When music makes you cry or evokes happy memories, the music matters…

When the silence of the end of a musical piece affects you, it’s because the music matters…

To musicians everywhere, in every performance that you give, never forget that the music matters….and to give that performance everything you have..because the music matters….

The music matters….

 

Reaper programming resources

Here are some resources for creating scripts/programs for the Reaper digital audio workstation:

AdmiralBumbleBee.com – ReaScript Tutorial – From total beginner to GUI-based script

ExtremeRaym – Raymond Radet’s website, author of ReaScript tutorial series, package of ReaScripts, and has a Github repo of scripts (also this one)

ReaPack.com – Package manager for Reaper

Cockos Forum – Building a GUI in Lua

Adam T. Croft – Introduction to ReaScript (I did the “Hello World” section, and it worked!)

ReaperBlog – ChordGun tool

SWS Extension – another Reaper tool

Reaper – ReaScript page (also ReaScript API page)

This ought to be enough to get me started! I want to create some functions to do computer-assisted composition…

Taking things one step at a time

Today was the first day I had some spare time to look at the Reaper digital audio workstation software that I am planning to use with my Alesis V49 MIDI controller keyboard. I decided to watch the first video in the series “First MIDI Song in Reaper (1/8) and try to duplicate the steps. The first part involved downloading and installing some plugins for a piano sound and a synth sound. Both of those took a little more time than I thought it would (some of the installation steps had changed, and not all of the steps were given, so I had to do some sleuthing to get the files in the correct directories). The next set of steps were for creating a track, playing a short melody on the MIDI controller, then editing that track. Well, my piano skills are not that good, so THAT took a while (mostly on editing what I entered to match what the video had). The final part was to add two more tracks to add chords and pad sounds. I have not done this last part yet, but I am getting there….one step at a time…with some missteps and backtracking….

Report on building my daily writing habit – September 2019

I started again on a quest to build a daily writing habit back in August. Since August 13, I wrote 18 posts in August (one a day) and 4 posts so far in September (again, 1 a day). I decided to use my weblog as the writing tool, with the goal of at least 100 words in a post (WordPress has a word count in the editor, so it’s easy to check). During the work week, I do my writing at lunch (before I do any web surfing…). Sometimes I have a topic in mind, but if not, I read through the new items in my RSS reader app (powered by River5) and find something to comment about. I have also talked about some software activities I am involved in, as well as a resumption of interest in computer music stuff. Today, I read a post from Colin Devroe about bad reasons not to blog, and I think I have avoided most of these. He also has a list of blogging tips which I think I will try to incorporate in my writing.

So far, I have only had problems once or twice in getting to 100 words, so this is a reachable goal for me. The other important part of the habit was making it a priority (I tried writing at lunch before, but ran out of time after web surfing, so I changed the order and – voila – I was able to write!).