Bookmarked
The New Yorker: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Message to the Democratic Party – good summary of how a newcomer in New York is challenging the Democratic Party.

How to get your Technician license

I recently got my Technician Class license from the FCC (call sign KI7ZHS) – woohoo! I had been interested in getting an amateur radio license for some time, but had not “gotten off the dime” to do anything about it. The thing that got me on the road to my license was a ham radio friend – I asked him to help me. He suggested the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual for the Technician Class License, and he got a copy for me – what a guy! The book has nine chapters with each chapter covering a different topic. Each chapter is broken into sections, with a reference to the official question pool in the back of the book. That’s right – all of the possible questions on the test are included! I decided to start with reading a chapter a day to learn the material. I also looked on the ARRL site for testing locations near me. Finally, as I got close to the test date, I took some practice exams to make sure that I knew the material. Once I passed some practice exams, I knew I could pass the real one, and I did on my first try! You can do it too!

Bug report for PocketCasts

I use Pocket Casts on my Samsung Galaxy S5 to listen to podcasts, and I love it! There is a podcast that I am having problems in getting the latest podcasts in the feed. Ironically, it is the feed for Dave Winer’s Scripting News weblog, the inventor of podcasting! Here is a bug report, hopefully Shifty Jelly can look into this.

Here’s the bug report (per this format):

  1. What I did

I selected the Discover option in Pocket Casts, tapped the magnifying glass in the upper right corner, and entered the feed URL (http://scripting.com/rss.xml) into the text box. Pocket Casts then showed this screen:

The podcast that is shown at the top is from 2015 (Silos Vs. The Internet). I was able to download this and play it.

2. What I expected to happen

I thought that Pocket Casts would read the feed URL and collect the current podcasts referenced in this feed (at 1:09PM PST on June 30, 2018, there was one podcast in the feed, dated June 28, 2018).

3. What actually happened

Pocket Casts read some feed that was not the current feed for the URL and provided a list of podcasts that were quite old.

I took a look at the feed given above and my weblog feed (http://andysylvester.com/feed/) and I did notice one difference between them. My feed as a mp3 file as an enclosure, but the Scripting News feed has a m4a file. The mime type is the same (audio/mpeg). Maybe the Scripting News feed should have a different audio type (audio/mp4, perhaps). However, the file plays in Google Chrome.

Shifty Jelly, let’s hear from you!

 

 

Two new projects

I have put together a draft website for a local non-profit (our local cable access channel), check it out!

Also, I recently passed my Technician license exam, so I am an official radio amateur (call sign KI7ZHS) – woohoo!

Why praise Micro.blog?

My friend, John Philpin, responded (https://beyondbridges.net/2018/06/in-praise-of-micro-blog/) to my question about using Micro.blog (what makes it more than just another blogging service), and to me his response in a nutshell is “community”. One of the features of Micro.blog is the ability to find other Micro.blog users using the Discover /Users page (https://micro.blog/discover/users), then to “follow” them after selecting a user (a la Twitter), then seeing the posts of those users in the Timeline (a la Twitter), being able to respond quickly to them (a la Twitter), and creating Mentions by using the username of the user (a la Twitter). To me, this is the “killer feature” of Micro.blog. The posting abilities are pretty standard (editing, linking, etc.).

Perhaps another “killer feature” is that the Micro.blog staff perform curation and enforce community guidelines (http://macgenie.micro.blog/2018/04/10/a-guide-to.html), which results in higher signal-to-noise ratio for postings and conversations. I started this year with a goal of making some type of post every day, even if it was just a link. That lasted about six weeks, so I am trying to “get back in the saddle again” through this post.

I tend to use RSS for tracking posts of people I am interested in (my reading list page (http://readinglist.andysylvester.com/) is an example), and then engage as I see interesting posts. I can follow the posters at Micro.blog through RSS, and do follow a few people I know (John Philpin, Ron Chester, Frank McPherson). Sometimes I feel my reading time is limited, and this reading list gives me a single place to go to follow the people that interest me.

So, should I praise Micro.blog? As a service, it is still somewhat new. However, it appears to have attracted a number of followers, and has a possibly sustainable business model through hosting support. I think it deserves the opportunity to demonstrate how blogging can facilitate community through services paid for by users, and welcoming those (like myself) who are posting from afar…