Tweeted poetry about Art Show. #

Twitter list with the fan feeds Art Show is following.#

The fan art feeds from Twitter are now available as a web app, at artshow.scripting.com. I think that's about all the work I'm going to do on this project for now. The GitHub repo will update periodically with more images. I've shared the source for the Node app that gathers the images and data about the images, and the web app that displays the art in a web browser. There's a public JSON file, part of the repo, that is a list of all the images, so you can create your own apps if you like. There is a howto doc. Thanks to the fans who curate these wonderful art feeds. I love it, and am glad to be able to do a small part to make the art more useful. If you have questions or comments, please open an issue on the repo. #

We should have the civil war now while Democrats control the government.#

34-minute podcast that's all over the map. But it's been a while, so there's lots to catch up on, esp with Scroll, and Repubs trying to overthrow the US government, how when you "invent" something, you have nothing but an intuition that what you're doing might be useful, certainly no clue how it will ultimately be used, the 50 best songs of 1971, and lots lots more. #

Congress should follow Facebook's lead and expel members who supported the January 6 insurrection.#

Why Facebook must continue to ban Trump. Mitigating damage. If there were a sniper shooting up Times Square, it would be wrong for a bullet-supplier deliver more ammo to him. You might argue bullets are too dangerous to sell to anyone, but with Trump there's no excuse.#

Having written so much about paywalls and subscriptions, it was a big deal for me that yesterday Twitter announced that they had acquired Scroll, a company that was founded to fix those problems, if only enough news publishers agreed. That's the chicken that's waiting for the egg, etc. It's possible that Twitter can make the difference, the same way the NYT made the difference for RSS in 2002. That's what gives life to a standard. An entity so central to an economy, like NYT was to news in 2002, getting behind an independently developed format or protocol. With RSS it was an instant hit. It would be better imho if the NYT had bought Scroll and put its subscription function behind it. Would have also made sense for the Washington Post to do it, esp with Bezos as the owner. No question Amazon would know how to monetize this so as to eliminate the stifling ideas of paywalls and subscriptions. But Twitter is what we got. There was a post from them yesterday that spelled out the vision. I wish them, and us, lots of luck, because the current economic system for news is untenable. Maybe Twitter can make the difference.#

Fifty years ago today: Four Dead in Ohio.#

One year ago today: "People seem to feel it's over, they see the weather changing, winter is finally over, summer is here, we must have survived, time to go out and play. That's evolution for you. Of course the virus is still out there hunting us."#

I wonder if people who feel that wearing a mask or getting vaccinated is giving up too much freedom, realize that you have absolutely zero freedom if you are hospitalized with Covid. You can't get up from bed, can't go home, can't even take a piss on your own. #

I question the idea that 1/2 of our legislative government can be trying to overthrow it. I think there has to be a radical response to this. Pretending it's possible is imho impossible. #

Yesterday I wrote about the fan art accounts on Twitter, and what they've made possible. I now have my app running and downloading images from the initial 26 accounts. I've uploaded the first batch of images to a GitHub repository. I plan to update them as long as there's interest in this project. I've also included the source code, with instructions, in case you want to run it yourself. I'm sure there will be problems that need fixing, if you spot anything, post an issue in the repo for the app. I love this, it started as a warm-up project, but quickly got a life of its own. #

Video demo. I pointed my iPhone at my living room TV, displaying my Mac Mini, which has the images from the new project. #

Really big things don't get imagined, imho, they just show up. I did not understand the web at first, I was reading about it, scratching my head, until boom, I saw it happening. #

This is the kind of ad I hoped the Lincoln Project would run. They can still occupy Trump's brain, rent-free, and it's still worth doing.#

I wrote yesterday on Twitter that journalism does not cover the 2.8 billion people who use Facebook. Imagine a country with that many people with no journalism. A blind spot, imho. A potentially costly one for all of us, our journalism should be facing in that direction more, imho. Taylor Lorenz, NYT reporter who covers Facebook and Instagram and other online media (I think it's all commercial services, no open platforms) responded with classic reporter reasoning, the same line I've been hearing since I took an interest in journalism in the mid-90s. After a few back and forths, I sent a DM saying I'd be happy to continue in a voice chat, was surprised when she sent back her number. I called and we talked for about an hour. It was a fast and interesting conversation with a talented and observant young (from my pov of course) person. She got her start as a Tumblr blogger believe it or not. She might be the only person in the world actually covering those 2.8 billion people. We talked about the NYT today, I talked a bit about tech reporting at the Times in the past, told stories of the old days in the Valley, it was refreshing. Memorable. I'm going to read her more carefully now. BTW, I dropped Markoff's name a couple of times, later I wondered if she knew who he is (NYT star tech reporter as the web was starting up). I realize we are deep into the next generations of tech journalism, now. Also imho TL should have a podcast, I said a couple of times. A book first, then a podcast. I think she'd be great. ?? #

I had another conversation a few days ago, on Twitter Spaces, with Clemens Vasters who works on standards at Microsoft. It was like the conversation with Taylor Lorenz, above. There was a brief period when I was involved with the standards groups, but mostly it turns out, it was to either transfer the power to evolve the formats and protocols without my further involvement with SOAP, or to fail to convince them to go with RSS. Instead they tried to overtake RSS with another format, it failed, as I tried to tell them it would. Many years later, I hear there's a kind of reverence for RSS, its strength is amazing to them. But why should it be any less resilient than say HTML? Both are proof that the market creates these things, not the big tech companies. Honesly most of what they do in my experience is destructive to standards. Anyway if we're into interop now, maybe there's something more to be done here. I have three formats I am caring for -- OPML, XML-RPC and of course RSS. #

I've had Olive Kitteridge on my re-watch list for a couple of years, finally got to it, and it was as good as I remembered. It's the kind of story HBO excels at, they have a deep library of shows like this, many of which I've never seen. Unfortunately HBO's owners decided that this unique library doesn't deserve to stand alone. They used its name to host a cheap Netflix clone called HBO Max, and filled it with crap, among which the HBO gems are buried. Sorry I know some people like superhero movies, I used to, but there's a glut and they're all the same, I can't watch any of them. I just want a simple interface for the HBO library. I guess the message is that HBO had no future, so let's just use what goodwill remains to throw a Hail Mary pass at Netflix. Meanwhile Apple seems to be aiming for the position HBO used to own., #

But. The NYT has the TV-watching UI that I've wanted all along. A set of lists of the top 50 movies and shows on each of the major streaming services, with a paragraph about each summarizing what the NYT reviewer said, with a link to both the review and the show. That's all I ever needed. An example#

I love that there are so many fan art accounts on Twitter. Basically someone takes responsibility for a famous artist, and uploads scans of their paintings and drawings to Twitter. Seems to be catching on. My Node app reads those accounts periodically and downloads the images into a local folder, which I then point my Mac screen saver at. I have it running on a Mac Mini hooked up to my 65 inch screen in the living room. The result? Art show! I love this stuff. I'm going to hook the app up to a GitHub repo, so people can sync to that. We have such a wealth of art, and huge numbers of screens and good networks. Why not use them this way? The art is sooo beautful. Makes me happy. #

Another day another dollar.#

Everyone seems to have a reason they don't have to listen. No wonder the world is so screwed up.#

People are amazed that Joe Biden has turned into a progressive president, with ambitions comparable to FDR and LBJ, but he’s exactly the kind who can do that. Just as Richard Nixon, a famous communist hater, was able to open relations with China in 1972. Biden has a reputation as a moderate, therefore he has credibility when calling for more radical approaches to recovery.#

This is what "podcasting" is going to be like once its spotification is complete.#

Reporters generally miss why Reagan’s attacks on government were so well-received by Americans. The reason: Nixon, Vietnam and Watergate. Jimmy Carter was the first response to all that. A guy who was so clean he thought that having lust in his heart for women other than his wife was a sin. Then Reagan was the final eradication of Nixon, or so we felt. We had no trust of government, so our votes were all about hobbling government. The error was not realizing the role it played in American power. He went way too far. That became clear, to me, with the response to 9/11. We needed a smart government that used American power with care and respect. Dubya was what we had instead. #

I've been using Twitter Spaces, their new competitor to Clubhouse, at the encouragement of Robert Scoble, who has taken to it the way he gets involved in everything, head first and way over his head. Completely submerged. Fine. I'm vulnerable to media like this, so I spent a couple of hours there in the last few days. I've been recovering from the stomach thing, so there's no harm in wasting a bit of time I wasn't going to use productively anyway. One thing Scoble said to me, when we were discussing Basecamp, is that's fine but you're a white person. To which I said what I've always wanted to say to this. Yeah, but you're not refuting what I said, which has no race, age or gender. How about considering the ideas, where ever they might come from. In my experience, good ideas can come from places you're not expecting them. Sometimes I'm sure I've missed them altogether because of that. Other times I've almost missed them. It has happened enough that I consciously try to turn off that kind of judgement and just listen and consider regardless of who's speaking. This is one of the worst things about the current rage to discount anyone who isn't young, of color and/or female. What made me think about all this is the flack the kids who are upset about inaction among adults re climate change are getting. The adults are attacking them because they're children. They aren't even listening to what they say. #

I've said this a million times. One more time won't hurt. Podcasting was created so everyone can make media. It was designed, deliberately, without gatekeepers. To have a podcast, you have to have a public RSS feed with enclosures. That's why you hear at the end of podcasts, "You can get this where ever you get podcasts." They may name one or two of those places, but you know, because it's a podcast, you can listen to it in any podcast client, or in a pinch just by entering the URL of the feed into a web browser. That's why when Spotify calls what Joe Rogan does a "podcast" it's an insult to all the people who worked so hard to make podcasting the huge juggernaut it is today. They should be crucified and burned at the stake for being total corporate assholes. I don't use Spotify. Never have, never will. Luckily I don't give a shit about Joe Rogan. I hear he's mean and stupid. And if you make an exclusive deal with Spotify as he did, you can be sure I'll never hear what you say. There's nothing wrong with Spotify offering proprietary radio shows. Just don't call them podcasts. Same goes for Audible and all the other companies who think open networks don't matter.#

I'd love to hear a real explanation of why they won't release the patents for the vaccines. In plain English. No hemming or hawing. #

Later -- I learned that the Gates Foundation has equity in the company that makes the Pfizer vaccine. So when he talks about not needing to share the patent with countries where the virus is running wild, like India, that's not really the new Bill Gates, philanthropist giving away all his money for the good of humanity speaking, rather it's the new Bill Gates, seeking world domination as always, posing as a philanthropist who's giving away all his money. ??#

NYC is opening 100% on July 1. I wonder if they're aware what's happening in India. I don't see the US as disconnected, at all.#

A port of Frontier to Linux really has to be in C. #

Poll: How do you feel about Rudy G's upcoming perp walk?#

I wrote about Basecamp's controversy yesterday, and since then more has come out. The company kept a list of customers with "funny" names, for years. Assuming this is true, they deserve all the grief they get. I understand that non-founders do stuff like that, I've seen it, I've fought against it -- it's the job of the founder to take the side of the users. And make it clear that showing anything but love and admiration for all customers, every damn one of them, is not only not optional, but will get you fired after not too many offenses. It's very hard to keep user-disrespect from taking over companies, so you always have to watch for it and be a complete fucking asshole about it. People who wade through all the confusion of the market and figure out that your product is the best are geniuses. They are your lifeblood. Also, I certainly would have been on their list. I have a "funny" last name. I know it. A product of Ellis Island. But I am not a customer of theirs. #

They're totally throwing Rudy under the bus. He's going to be blamed for everything. Perfect. Rudy the garbage can.#

Would love to see in President Biden's speech tonight a cash bonus to residents of blue states who relocate to Wyoming, Idaho, Montana or one of the Dakotas. We could add 10 senate seats and a bunch of electoral votes. Enough to keep the filibuster or tell Manchin to STFU. Maybe you pay no federal taxes for 25 years? That would be cool. I even have a slogan. Do a mitzvah for 'Merica.#

BTW, I am mostly over the stomach bug. I went for an hour-long bike ride yesterday, and it felt wonderful. And look at all the writing I did today! Not wanting to return to development yet, the break has been worthwhile. I have been tending my todo list, and plotting out next steps. I left the software in a good place, it seems. I'm not worried about it at this time. More glad to have recovered my health. #

A favorite story from 1996 about bees.#

I propose that the Democrats publish what they think would be fair districting for every state, including ones that Republicans control. That way we can see how they deviate from fairness. Give journalism a means to compare. Help people understand gerrymandering. Another possibility -- maybe someone like Nate Silver could put together fair redistricting maps for all the states. It'd be an interesting idea to approach it as a non-partisan thing, using the best information and data tools we have. (Update: They did it last time around.)#

I've been reading Roots while I've been waiting for this stomach thing to pass. Maybe not the best choice for reading material when you're feeling sick, but it's a gripping story, very well told. It's long. And the slaves the stories are about didn't have the luxury of switching to a different entertainment medium. Now I find as I poke around on the net and read what people say about prejudice and racism, I think no -- that's doesn't begin to cover it. I read that 46% of Republicans polled feel the verdict in the Chauvin trial was wrong. The only universe that it was the wrong verdict was when black people, like George Floyd were slaves, and the only crime Chauvin would be guilty of was destroying another person's property. I wrote in a tweet: "We were taught in school that slavery was over in the US but for millions of Americans it wasn’t and isn’t." So far no one has objected to that interpretation. #

I did take a break from Roots to watch the Knicks win their 9th in a row. I love this team so much. Then I watched a couple of recommended movies on Netflix, High Flying Bird and Okja.#

This is what happens when a crazy minority takes control of the court. They want to make it legal to carry an unlicensed gun anywhere in the US, including urban states. This will get a lot of Americans hurt and killed. We have a huge gun problem in this country. It's like they're throwing around a nuke, we're hoping it won't go off. They're daring the Democrats to stop them. #

BTW, as you may know I also have a linkblog. I usually look for a link to a story on two sites: CNN and Axios. Neither site is overly cluttered with nonsense, and neither has a paywall. You can find out what the story is a few seconds and not use up any of your free allocation on other sites that do a good job but have paywalls. Thought I should get an endorsement in for this practice. They coud become the most-linked-to news sites. #

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding who the NY Times is, where they're coming from, and how I'm meant to understand what they're saying. Pretty sure they'd say, don't worry about these things, the Times just prints the truth, the whole truth, all sides well-represented. I don't think so. When I was a kid I believed that, I still knew they could make mistakes, but I thought they tried to get the actual story, that they weren't manipulating readers to believe things they wanted them to believe. The firing of Donald McNeil was a big deal for me. They never adequately explained why he couldn't continue as a senior reporter covering the story he had prepared for for decades. I don't believe the facts they presented. They were not adequate grounds for firing. Had something similar happened to a reporter of a different gender, race or age, nothing like that would have happened. Having exposed themselves so thoroughly, they have opened up a huge integrity issue. Remember integrity is the difference between what you are and what you appear to be. There's a deeper story there, and they've buried it. #

Another subject the NYT has no credibility on is Facebook. These days I don't even bother reading their coverage. Often the facts behind their criticism could be interpreted in Facebook's favor, but the Times never does that. They criticize Facebook for making a bad choice where all there are are bad choices. Could their own work stand up to that kind of scrutiny? I'd love to see them take a chance, but they don't. For every article that talks about all the terrible things that happen on Facebook, they have never, that I have seen, reported on how Facebook is useful, even indispensible. I assume this is because this idea is abhorrent to them. If they acknowledge that people, on their own, can provide service to each other, with no salaried reporter acting as a go-between, what does this say about their future? Well, a real news organization would put that aside, and go where the story is. A news organization that has more of a sense of service than the supposedly great NY Times. #

My under-the-weatherness continues. Sleeping a lot, not eating much, drinking lots of water. A busy week coming up. It would be nice if this virus-like thing were to go away. And this is weird because I thought we weren't supposed to get virus-like things. Still maybe it's something I ate? Oy. Thanks for all the get well messages. #

An easy way to make your writing better. Write the first draft as you think of the ideas. Then go back and delete all the connectives, all the things words you put in while your mind plotted out plots where you're going to take the writing next. And, delete every instance of the word very. Only leave the ones it where it's absolutely necessary to convey the veryness of the idea. Usually it adds nothing to the writing. #

Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher, died today at 42. I didn't know him, but I followed him on Twitter. One of his tweets is getting a lot of circulation now, and it's worth repeating. "If somebody helped you ― always feel free to let them know. They may not. Really. There is no statute of limitations on being thankful. Years, decades, doesn’t matter. Now is always a good time."#

With that in mind, thanks to John Naughton. He wrote a bit the other day about how that reporter at Vox said something totally wrong about the origin of podcasting, I'm sure the reporter knew it was wrong, and his editors knew it was wrong, but they published it anyway. Naughton thought I must've been furious, but I'm not, I'm exhausted. It's the norm. I'm not a billionaire. I let my ideas float around in the world, I don't lock them up. My goal with podcasting was to create a new medium that everyone could use, and that has worked. Reporters don't need to score any points with me, so they give credit for my work to others. I wrote Naughton an email saying "That's the way journalism works, I'm afraid. They report conventional wisdom, not facts. You're the rare exception."#

You can't trust Apple to act in your interests, whether you're a developer or a user. After so many years, it's amazing to me that some people who have been around for a while still expect them to be benevolent. And btw, I'm sure I've written this exact post before.#

It's been almost 19 years since I missed a day on the blog, and this isn't going to be one of them. Feeling a little under the weather, might be a cold, or maybe something I ate. Not conducive for having ideas. So that's it for today. Maybe I'll have something for y'all tomorrow. Keep on truckin. ??#

PS: It turns out I did have some ideas after all. Sitting down in front of a keyboard I guess pulls some words out of me. Kind of like putting a guitar in Prince's hands?#

The other day I reported that I had the project I'm working on "stabilized" after major brain surgery. In software it's always a good idea to be prepared for the worst possible outcome. In this case, I forgot that I hadn't deployed the new version to a server, and when I did that, nothing worked. Edge cases. It is once again "stabilized." But the list of new stuff to do is growing, not shrinking. And who knows what broke in the last round of changes. #

Now that cannabis is legal in New York State, where I live, I've been curious about how much prices vary around the country. I'm not aware of any comparison websites, but I've heard that Oregon is the least expensive, because they have an oversupply. I'm guessing that Massachusetts, the nearest state with retail sales, is still relatively high priced, because the business is so new. 1/8 ounce goes for about $50. I imagine that some of the aggregator sites have a good idea of this. I also wonder what kinds of plans there are for stores in various parts of New York. I imagine that the Village in Manhattan will be a place where there are lots of stores. I expect that Woodstock, the nearest town to where I live, will also be a big spot. If you have any information, please leave a note in this thread. #

I think in general, to rise to a position of fame and wealth in our society, you have to strive to never say anything. I was watching the beginning of an academic conference today, about social media, and recognize the way of speaking, having spent some time in academia myself. My mind drifted, because people weren't saying anything other than how great, amazing and wonderful people in their midst are, and wondered what would've happened at the NYT if the managing editor had told the people who wanted Donald McNeil fired for using a somewhat forbidden word in a discussion about using that word that they could resign, but they would not fire McNeil. Then I wondered why the people wanted McNeil fired in the first place. Maybe because this is the only way they get to have an opinion that isn't nothing. I recognize the pattern. As a man, I know that the only emotion that people are comfortable with from me is anger. Fear, fun, love, generally speaking happiness, all seem to make people uncomfortable, if you have a penis. I don't know why this is. But I reject it. We all should accept each other as we are, especially ourselves. It's this frustration with being nothing that made people want Trump, imho. We should learn to stop punishing people for being individuals. The other option is not good, as we found out. #

BTW, hat's off to Elon Musk. One of the rare exceptions of people who don't care enough to not tell you what they think. #

Back in 2015 the Mets were a blessed team, the way the Knicks are this year. You'd tune into a game in the 8th inning, the Mets down by 10, to see how they win. They had a few stars, pitchers and hitters who were all peaking at the same time, feeding off each others' energy, it seemed. Their run went all the way to the World Series, which they lost, unfortunately, but the charm was real. The Knicks are doing the same thing. As the fourth quarter starts to draw to a close in each game in the current run, you say that's it, no way the Knicks win this, but then Derek Rose finds Reggie Bullock, alone in a corner, he zips the ball to him and Bullock sinks a three, and we're off to overtime, which the Knicks dominate. This is sports that is charmed, not bought, like the Nets, Clippers or Lakers. Sure they have pedigree stars, they acquired a championship contender, but who cares about that. I love a team of nobodies who shine off each others' light and create an atmosphere of love, and they win because of it. People will soon forget the Nets, when the three stars go their way, to form some other super team in some other long-forgotten franchise. I think next year a few free agents will want to join up with the Knicks, but I hope the team resists. I want to see this team back again next year and the year after that. I want to watch Barrett and Quickley develop, and Rose be their mentors. I want Julius Randle to become the NBA star with a real heart, true to his squad. I feel about them as family, not acquisitions. All the years in the wilderness were worth it. #

The most common thing that stands between people working together is a dysfunctional kind of pride. People feel they are being put down if another person knows more about something than they do. There's an old management slogan that goes with this. "A people hire A people, B people hire C people." The point is this -- to win, you have to want to work with people who have developed skills, or even basic talent, that you don't have. That's how you form a team. If you have to do everything, you're going to have trouble making something useful.#

I was begging MSNBC to have Kornacki do Covid at the board. Now finally he's doing it. This. Will. Work.#

Peter Kafka writing in Vox said today that Apple "more or less invented podcasting." This is the kind of dishonest bullshit reporting that I'm always railing about. Anyway this inspired a longish thread on Twitter this morning, All I can say is 1. Oy and 2. Check out Walter Isaacson's podcast about the origins of podcasting. Glad to finally have a credible historian on the record on this. Kafka and Vox you should run a retraction. What people don't get about podcasting, it was a product. Marketed as such. But not with a financial model attached to it. We wanted to create new media, without barriers to entry, so the people could participate. 20 years later and I have to say that actually worked. Reporters don't respect any tech accomplishment that didn't generate a few billionaires (they should, there might be more if they did), but I made a bunch of money in the early tech industry, and I didn't feel very motivated to make more. I learned about what money can and can't do. Up to a point it's great, it buys your freedom, after that, there are limits to consumption, having good friends and fun is more important. And sex, that's important too. Anyway, I'm proud of our accomplishments with podcasting, even if reporters and Apple generally don't care. #

Another thing I'm proud of is having bet $50K on $AAPL in 1998. #

Glad the jurors arrived at the correct verdict, and a white cop has been convicted of murdering a black citizen. I do think tech deserves some of the credit. In the past, without a witness with a phone, it would have been the cops' word against the people's. #

The press release appears to be gone from the MPD website, but archive.org has a copy, via the WP, with a postscript saying the event was being investigated by the FBI. John Elder is the author. #

When you see the press release on George Floyd's death, you can see evidence that the cops colluded to tell a lie. In other words, Chauvin should not be the only cop going to jail. #

Journalists are so down on tech, but once they were fans of the snake oil. They still are, selectively, blockchain can do no harm, of course it does, look at how much carbon it liberates. And tech is helping expose the criminality of police. An obvious good.#

David Rothkopf: The GOP is worried about cancel culture? Wait until they hear about history.#

Today's song: Keep the Customer Satisfied. #

Today's theme song: Green Acres.#

What if the place you live became uninhabitable because of climate change?#

Some day someone in Silicon Valley will figure out how to get stock options to users in proportion to how early they signed on and the size of their contribution to the success of the platform. The ultimate tech gig. Users eat the world.#

One of the best investments I've made is in the S&P; 500. It's an index fund, the less famous of the two big ones, the other being the Dow Jones. It's a collection of stocks, chosen by a company named S&P; Global. Simplifying just a little, they buy shares in those stocks and then in turn sell shares of the collection to everyone, people like you and me. The value of the fund is the totall of the value of all the stock it owns, and fluctuates as their prices change. Every day it goes up or down, like a stock. It means that even if one of these companies does badly, the collection doesn't crash. It's designed to reflect the value of the "stock market." So why is the S&P; 500 such a good investment? This is what I think, everyone has an opinion about this. It's the way presidents are evaluated. If the stock market is doing well, then analysts say "the economy" is doing well, and the president's approval rating goes up. It doesn't make any sense, but that's how it works. So the president will work really hard to make sure that your bet on the S&P; 500 goes up and up and up, always, in good times and bad. Now, there are times when the S&P; 500 will go down, but usually it goes up. If you put some money there it will probably grow. Over time it will grow a lot. You can track the value of the S&P; 500 here. Here's a graph of the S&P; 500 from 1981 to now. You can see it does go up, but there are times it goes down. You can buy shares in the S&P; 500 from any brokerage firm. The list is open source, so any reputable broker can sell you an S&P; 500 fund. They all, by definition, behave exactly the same, though commissions on transactions differ according to brokers. That's why I say I "simplified" just a little.#

I still think this is the sexiest way to embed a tweet in a blog post. #

I got this in the mail. Obviously a scammer. Watch out for this. #

I have a couple of Blink cameras. Blink is owned by Amazon. They're sending me emails saying that my free plan is about to expire and that I should pay them, for something, they're not clear what, but it sounds like my cameras will be useless once they turn off the plan. In about a week. I don't like that they are so vague about what will happen if I don't pay the money. Amazon hasn't always been the most customer-friendly company, but this is unusual for them, not to be reasonably clear what the proposal is. This is the kind of slimy crap I expect from a cable tv company like Comcast or Spectrum. Or AOL back in the day. Companies that want your money and will do everything ot keep it coming, no matter how unprincipled. Of course I can and will let it expire to see what'll happen. I doubt seriously if, as they threaten, then it will be too late. Heh. This is the kind of campaign that just keeps coming. #

Has BitCoin been centralized? I don't really know enough to know the answer to that question. In other words, is Coinbase to Bitcoin as Facebook is to the open web?#

They're having a Social Media Summit at MIT next week. I have always been bothered by conferences that call themselves summits. Here's a picture of a summit. At the end of WWII, FDR sat down with Stalin. That's an actual summit. BTW, not sure why Churchill is there. :-)#

BTW, if it's a summit, you don't have to say it's a summit. The conference with FDR, Stalin and Churchill was simply called the Yalta Conference. My father once told me that a university doesn't have to say it's a university if they really are one. You don't see car window decals for proud parents that say Harvard University or Stanford University. Just Harvard and Stanford will do. He was putting down the window decal I got him for my school, which did proclaim itself a university. Even worse, they called themselves The Harvard of the South. Oy! That's not a good sign. I wonder if they still do that. And doing a search today I learn that Duke, Rice, Emory and Vanderbilt also consider themselves THOTS. Maybe they should forget it and just try to love their students more.#

BTW my father was an undergrad at Rutgers, which, while a fine school, isn't exactly The Harvard of New Jersey. Just sayin. ??#

The Harvard of New Jersey is Princeton, another school that can leave off the University part. Some people think it's an even better school than the other top most prestigious schools in the US, which imho would be Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale. #

I like to listen to audiobooks on my daily walks and bike rides, they're good to have around when podcasts aren't so interesting to me. It happens. Right now I'm listening to Roots, narrated by Avery Brooks. It's a beautifully crafted story, and the narration is among the best I've heard. I'm still at the beginning, but I love it, I'm even listening when I'm not out getting my exercise. #

BTW, to follow up on yesterday's posts about tabs and bookmarks in the outliner part of Drummer. It looks like I did get it stabilized yesterday. I have to qualify that because I saw some problems before I shut down for the day yesterday, after fixing a huge number of really serious mistakes and omissions. But I feel confident that I can start the post corner-turn cleanup and get ready for more fun projects starting tomorrow. (Update: Re the problems, oy there was a huge problem. In the main closure for a tab there's a background thread that I did not kill when the tab was closed. As a result it kept running. Whenever it saw a change in a file (not its file) it would save it, to the now-closed file, thus wiping out the contents of the closed file. This was hard to track down. Now everything is really smooth. Haha until I find the next horrible omission! Users never see these problems, hopefully, but this is what you have to deal with getting to the point where software is useful.)#

Hope you don't mind me saying this, but the Mac Finder should have a Bookmarks menu. #

I'm learning that more people from my Ulster County neighborhood are reading this blog. I find that exciting. Maybe we should have some meetups this summer? At the beer garden at the Colony? I love the idea of a beer garden in Woodstock, and as everyone knows, summers here are the best. There's a lot of planning to do now that cannabis is legal everywhere in NY State now. And Tuesday is 4/20. It looks like the weather is going to be nice. #

I don't know if I've ever told this story about my uncle at his hippie commune outside St Augustine, FL. Once I went to visit, on vacation from my Silicon Valley startup. When I arrived at his little off-grid geodesic cottage in the woods, he showed me they had pinned up an article in Business Week with a picture of me, which labeled me as President Dave Winer of Living Videotext. My uncle who claimed he had changed my diapers when I was an infant, thought this was insanely funny. He told me they started calling each other President Ken, or President Dorothy, or President Pumpkin (one of their dogs) or President Dump Kitty (one of the cats). I didn't object because in my mind I had a terrible case of impostor syndrome. No one in California dared make fun of it, but here in the woods with my dear uncle and friends, it seemed fine. #

BTW, there's a whole neighborhood on his 25 acres. Unbelievable how fast things grow, esp in Florida. #

I've been reading Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. It's a great book, but already dated. The missions he talks about for the future have already happened. Our understanding of Saturn, for example, has greatly increased since 1994. Now that Cassini has visited, so much more is known. Sagan of course is not alive to do this for us. But it seems someone should. Next up I'm going to re-read Cosmos. #

Just watched a bit of CNN. Overwhelming feeling ― they have no reason to exist.#

Drummer has a feature that LO2 doesn't have -- Bookmarks. Here's how they work. There's a Bookmarks menu. When you choose the first command, Add Bookmark, a dialog confirms that you want to bookmark the current outline. If you click OK, the bookmarks file opens in a tab, and a link to the file you had open appears as the first item in the list. You can move the link where ever you like, and change the text. If you look in the Bookmarks menu, the changes are reflected. The menu can be hierarchic. As you have probably guessed the file is an outline, like any other outline. But it has this special UI. There are a number of other features like this. Anyway, Bookmarks are tricky because of the way asynchronous code works in JavaScript. If bookmarks.opml isn't already open, you have to wait until it is open to create the bookmark link. If you don't, weird things can happen. Now that I've changed how tabs work internally, this feature is broken. It drives me crazy because I depend on Bookmarks, and I'm starting to use Drummer for real work now. So today I must get this problem solved. I'm not getting up until it works. ??#

BTW, it's not exactly true that no outliner I've shipped has had a Bookmarks menu. "Electric Outliner" has one. But I haven't exactly promoted it. I use it to write my blog, in fact I'm using it right now to write this. It has had a Bookmarks menu for years, and I've been able to manage lots of complex projects more easily because of it. EO is an Electron-based outliner that runs on the desktop. There will be a desktop version of Drummer, using lots of what's in EO, hopefully. It's possible we did a bookmarks feature for Frontier too. And menu sharing is something like Bookmarks. My memory sucks. Sorry.#

BTW, there is a hair trimming product called Electric Outliner. It's screwing up my search for mentions of my Electric Outliner outside this blog. #

Today I learned that the jQuery attr function, if you pass it a function, it calls the function. This. Is. A. Bug. It blew my mind when I figured out what was going on. Phewwww. That's the sound of my mind being blown. Back to work Davey.#

Poll: Will Derek Chauvin be convicted?#

I've been trying to watch the news on MSNBC and CNN, but it's really hard to get into. Their product transformed under Trump, and now that he is gone, or so it seems, knock wood -- what's left for them to cover? Here's what I suggest. This requires that you put the heat on Biden and Judge Garland. First I've heard it said that January 6 could happen again, which I think is too meek. It will happen again. And until the prosecutions begin, the news should be filling in the details the same way they were covering every detail of the Trump crime scene when he was in office. Who are the leaders? Their names, pictures, backgrounds, are they free, awaiting trial, on the run? These people, and the politicians that are covering for them, the six sentators who voted against the Asian hate crimes bill, to name a few, are vying for the position of The Next Hitler of the United States. We need a bunch of good enemies. And why aren't the Bidens prosecuting them. We need some bodies in cells for January 6, now. ??#

So, instead of watching the news from 6PM to 10PM every night, as I did during the Trump years, I've been reading books, watching the Mets and Knicks, watching British movies, also the Godfather I and II. On the whole this is a better deal. More variety, it's more personal, much less repetitive, and besides the Knicks are playing entertaining basketball, and that's more than I can say for whatever sport they're playing on MSNBC. #

On the Drummer front, I decided to rewrite the tab code to use JavaScript closures. Much simpler code and hopefully more easily extended to add new functionality. But right now the app is a mess. I learned some new jQuery tricks with custom event handlers and triggers. You can have a very isolated function with persistent and private storage but you can still make calls into it, for the times when the outside world needs to know something about what's inside. #

Everyone above 16 in New York State can now get vaccinated, and where I live, without an appointment. So vaccination scarcity is over. All you need is ID. But people without ID can get and spread the virus. What’s the plan for such people?#

An unusual day is one where It's almost 6PM and I haven't posted anything to the blog. This is one of those days. I think I actually have to update at least once a day for the nightly mail app. Not sure what it would do if midnight came and there was nothing new. I don't really want to find out. Everything's fine, in the middle of a pretty heavy bit of development so my focus is there. See you tomorrow! ;-)#

Hello. My name is Dave and I'm addicted to Granny Smith apples.#

I have to say, a consistent theme in my career has been, I create something, through a lot of work and trial and error, and years later it's out and people like it. And then people say thanks for doing that, now I'll take over. The first time I saw that in a huge way was with OPML. It came a couple of years after RSS's success, and a lot of people assumed OPML would be big and they could get rich if they owned it. I had a colleague at Harvard even tell me literally he was going to take over now. Those were the words he used. He had no idea what OPML was! I thought this is the height of ridiculousness. It got so awful I just dropped the project, to let them all fail, which is exactly what happened. These things aren't designed to get anyone rich. There is no lock-in possible so nothing to charge money for. How stupid can you be. Obviously, I learned the lesson that people can be very very very stupid. And unbelievably, larcenously, greedy. (BTW, the guy from Harvard was already very rich. He did not need more money. I had been to his house.)#

So many more examples. Like the VCs and RSS. They all lost all their money because they thought a format can be owned. None of them were interested in where I thought the products were, they all created the same product, badly -- and failed. Podcasting, more of the same. My partner, Adam Curry, thought I was just a programmer, and therefore fungible. I am a programmer, for sure -- but I think about things in a different way, there's a part of the stack almost no one else gets into. I see new media before it exists. I work at it. You can't just hire someone to do what I do. That's why my consistent drumbeat is Let's Work Together. Instead of stopping here, there's much more to do and no one gets to do it all. The interchange format isn't ownable. But most people don't get that, and when they bet money that they can, they lose it all. #

Drummer is going to be the anti-silo, as Frontier was. What this meant for Frontier is when we saw a new protocol, our first impulse was to implement it. I wanted it to be able to communicate with anything. A silo'd outliner would instead usually not to support a protocol, and implement everything itself. Watching Roam, I'd say they are a half-silo. When it comes to exporting content from Roam they seem to be fairly liberal. They don't want to implement their own blogging software, for example, they'd prefer to export to a static site generator. But, they are fairly closed to allowing other editing tools to be able to push content into their graph. I wanted to see how at least some of my writing here on Scripting News, in outlines, would look in their graph. As far as I can tell, it might be possible to do, but it would require a lot of work by hand, and no one has time to do that. It would make more sense imho to support some kind of standard interchange format. Luckily, I created one, in the 00s, for just this purpose, and it's pretty broadly supported. Anyway they certainly don't make it easy. They really want me to use their outliner. I'm sure it's very nice, but I already have one. Anyway, like all recent text products and services, you're pretty much locked into using their editor. #

Follow-up to yesterday's braintrust query. Apparently WordPress still has an API, there's a Node package to interface to it, and even better, they still have the XML-RPC interface and support the Metaweblog API. So it should be possible to have WordPress support in Drummer and use the outliner to create and edit posts on a WordPress website, and who knows where that goes. What's especially cool about it is that in December 2019 I released a new reference implementation of XML-RPC in the form of a client and server for Node, in JavaScript of course, and a client that runs in the browser. So now there's a good reason to add XML-RPC support to Drummer, which I totally want to do. #

BTW, if someone is looking for an interesting not-too-huge project, hooking up the JavaScript XML-RPC package to WordPress via the MetaWeblog API is a totally self-contained project and would be very helpful. #

I'm glad the Free Software Foundation is standing with Richard Stallman. You don't get to destroy someone's life because you don't like him, or the questions he asks, or the things he says. This really is a question of freedom. #

Braintrust query: Is there a way to post to WordPress from an external app? If it has an API, I'd like to get support in the first release of Drummer. It's an important connection. For years they had an XML-RPC interface. I think that's gone now. Has something replaced it yet? (Update: This looks promising.)#

Earlier this month I wrote a piece called The Lost Apps of the 80s, wondering where the depth of early PC writing tools went. Also spreadsheets, databases, graphics programs. There were huge numbers of them. The reason imho is Microsoft and not just the Browser Wars which threw all of software into chaos for a number of years. There's another reason, and it might have happened even if the web hadn't come along. Microsoft Office. So quickly I forgot. It used to be that a word processor cost $495 as did a database, spreadsheet, and various other software. When you added up the retail prices it could easily come to $2000. Then one day, Microsoft bundled Word and Excel and a few other apps, for the price of a single productivity app. And over the years, they added more software to the bundle. This alone might have reduced the productiving software business to one vendor. The competitors couldn't afford to do what Microsoft did, they didn't have the royalties from the OS to support their price-cutting in apps. So that's another theory on where the apps went. Today, that's no excuse. Writing tools would have a different purpose today, writing for the network, rather than for printing. Different requirements. #

Why doesn't Georgia get rid of the lines for voters? Isn't this the obvious question. Has anyone asked Gov Kemp? Is that something he can help with?#

Someday users of network services, having been burned by lock-in, will only choose a service when they’re sure there’s a way out.#

We need a coach to get us through the pandemic. Whether or not you like him, Cuomo was doing that. That’s why I say Fauci should have a podcast. The interviews he does with various people isn’t enough. #

I just found a 1991 piece by Steven Levy at MacWorld about Frontier, which was still in development at the time. Really interesting read because now, only 30 years later (heh), I'm doing a smaller version of the same idea, not on the Mac but on the open web, once again using standard protocols to connect apps. It starts on page 51 of this PDF of the August 1991 MacWorld. Here's a screen shot of the first page. #

What neither Levy or I understood, at the same time in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee was working on the world wide web. Frontier's importance in bootstrapping the web as a content management platform, via blogging, RSS and podcasting, was where the real growth would come. It would require a pivot, of course. The Mac was entering middle age, as Levy postulated. But a new shiny thing that worked really well with the Mac was coming along and would soon change everything. The same vacuum that existed on the Mac at the time, now exists on the web. There is no simple-enough scripting language designed for power users to integrate the functionality of many and disparate apps. Why do I like this so much? I guess I'm just a pipes and wires kind of guy. And I think lots of new media will emerge from the ecosystem we'll create here. #

I know this is just math, but 1980 is to 1940 as 2020 is to 1980.#

Tweeted in 2014. "We are just beginning to come to grips with how over-reliant we've been on the imagined ethics of tech companies." #

Embarrassing mistake. Yesterday, in a longish piece about bingewatching, I gave Kazuo Ishiguro credit for writing the novel Howard’s End. He actually wrote Remains of the Day. There is a connection. Both were made into movies starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. I corrected the piece, but here's a screen shot of the error. BTW, interestingly, I received an email from Netflix last night suggesting I watch Howard's End. Is it a coincidence, or does their algorithm read my blog? That would be amazing if it did. (I'm sure it doesn't but it's an incredible source about my interests.)#