Andrew Canion

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:57:58 GMT

I’m still here. I’ve transitioned my Blot blog into my micro.blog site. Both are still up and running but I see micro.blog as the canonical online place for my words now. I will probably keep up my subscription for Blot since it’s cheap and I have it linked to a unique domain name. I need to decide what purpose it can serve.

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:59:33 GMT

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 12:57:42 GMT

I haven't Drummed in over a month. I've been busy. I've been doing other things. I've been realising that I already have too many places to type stuff, and a memory that can never remember where I typed said stuff.

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 12:58:24 GMT

Here I am once more, though, typing. I don't want Drummer to die, but I don't have the bandwidth right now to be highly invested.

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 02:49:02 GMT

The glossary feature in Drummer is so great. It's like Textexpander for blog publishing. I've only got a few entries in there - which is probably for the best - but it's so clever.

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 15:20:35 GMT

A new episode of NBL Pocket Podcast has been recorded and released. I’ve been into Australian basketball since 1987. This passion is entirely different to my other more nerdy pursuits.

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 11:55:56 GMT

The latest episode of Hemispheric Views has been released. In this episode, we interview Adam Newbold who built omg.lol and introduce the idea of Nostalgic November. Find it in your favourite podcast player of choice, or listen on the web.

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 07:02:39 GMT

I found something interesting on the web which prompted me to recall something I had earlier saved into Readwise via Instapaper. I saved this new interesting thing into Devonthink, Instapaper and Readwise. I also wanted to link the thoughts together. I loaded Obsidian to get the synced Readwise data, then captured my distilled thinking into a note in Craft. This workflow is bonkers. Next thing I see Phil referencing an article by Steve Berlin Johnson about designing an ideal knowledge-app workflow. How fortuitous, I'll subscribe to that Substack newsletter. Until I see the price is US$50. Nope, I'll find my own way.

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 11:19:27 GMT

Back when the Internet was ruled by geeks it was possible to search for something and find a useful how-to guide. Now, all that such a search returns are a bunch of listicles where the final recommendation is “buy our product” and random YouTube videos that all start with, “Hi Guys!”. I miss the old Internet for its problem-solving powers.

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 11:17:21 GMT

So if somebody could go ahead and tell me what I should put on here, compared with my micro.blog site, compared with my Blot site, that would be great. Thanks!

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 06:46:47 GMT

I've reinstalled YNAB4 and updated it to 64 bit. It's like revisiting an old friend. YNAB4 is still lovely, and in so many ways I prefer it to the current web app.

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 01:18:41 GMT

Paid work is the thing that gets in the way of the stuff you really want to do.

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 04:50:08 GMT

I'm recording Hemispheric Views right now.

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 15:00:18 GMT

One thing I have noticed in using Drummer is that it feels lonely. More to the point, I think I've become so used to the back and forth that can happen on micro.blog after posting something. We don't get that on Drummer. There is also no formalised commenting engine (not that I'm asking for one). Is there a method whereby webmentions would work? Drummer is true to its old school roots here, with no obvious way of achieving conversation.

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 07:11:23 GMT

I spent a bit of time setting up my home loans in the new Loans management feature of YNAB. Then I spent some more time unwinding all the changes to get rid of it. The feature is undercooked. It doesn't support any loan situations which are quite standard features in Australia, such as fortnightly payments, offset accounts, daily interest rate calculations, and interest-only loans. They really do seem to pitch their product at the fat part of the curve, that being an American with a few very basic assets and liabilities. We're also still waiting for direct bank connections on this side of the world...

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 23:39:05 GMT

I’m thinking about fresh installing my iMac. It’s been migrated many times. It’s customised to the hilt. Why am I thinking about this that will deliver me pain?

It appears that Dave Winer uses the node with the page icon, generated using the plus button, for each new node under a day. Then he uses disclosure triangles for any further commentary beneath that node.

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:59:57 GMT

If it’s good enough for the developer, I guess it’s good enough for me. Except it makes that first node a heading, and if I outdent this node, this one doesn’t render.

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:37:49 GMT

I found the link to the guide for creating a 'build my blog' icon.

Bugs and Software and Hardware, oh my!

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 13:37:37 GMT

Plex Remote Access is weird but it might not be the fault of Plex. It might be the recent addition of Eero Pro 6 routers. I've had too many network changes recently to boil it down to a culprit, not least of which is that Plex is now running on a different server. The remote access page says it's working. A few seconds later it says it isn't. I've tried manually opening a port in the Eero with the same result. These kind of network challenges are frustrating.

On the topic of software and hardware challenges, our Bose Sounder 500 is entirely unreliable about outputting sound from an Apple TV/TV combination. Again though - what to blame? The soundbar, HDMI or some other weirdness. Cursed, I say!

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:37:45 GMT

Perth is warming up.

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 11:33:27 GMT

Pretty certain Dave was talking about me. I appreciate what he is saying, and agree that it’s not _difficult_ in Drummer, rather I still think keeping my hands on the keyboard and typing some []() is quicker and easier than using a pointer and a GUI. Especially on iPad, where graphical text selection isn’t ideal. But I recognise that it’s easy to cast stones from afar and much harder to build software.

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:59:34 GMT

I had one of our semi-regular calls with friends tonight on Jitsi. It's always nourishing to talk stupid talk with friends I've had for decades. Nothing is out of bounds; nothing is too silly or crass. That level of stupidity is nourishing for the soul.

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 00:45:31 GMT

Andy Sylvester has kindly added this Drummer to his Drummer River.

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 00:46:56 GMT

I would love for Drummer to support at least a very basic subset of markdown - mainly for links and code blocks. I can live without text styling markdown, but inserting links using the GUI is brutal.

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 00:47:53 GMT

The Drummer date publishing issue continues - these entries for October 27 are not being rendered.

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 06:31:35 GMT

I still find it hard to believe that I saw a double rainbow recently.

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 12:30:33 GMT

I got new computing hardware today, which is exciting. Less exciting is the realisation that my home Ethernet is no longer up to the job. I need to rewire and upgrade. I don't want to do that job. I might have to throw money at the problem...

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:02:31 GMT

Part of the transition to the new computer was moving my Thunderbolt drive array to it. Now I have Photos.app in some unknown state of sync on the new machine, trying to sync the previous library. And I've transferred my Backblaze license to it, because I want that drive array backed up. But now Backblaze is also going crazy doing checksums against everything. I hope I can go to bed, wake up, and find that the computer has done its thing.

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 08:55:33 GMT

I've installed the Getting Post URL in Drummer script by Amit. I should now be able to link to another node. Yes, I can link to yesterday's post about the Hemispheric Views live watch.

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 13:50:09 GMT

The Hemispheric Views live watch event for our Patreon supporters went off without a hitch, and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. I’m immensely proud of the small but impressive community of people we have built around our podcast. It is a great example of finding, and building, your tribe. The people we have in our corner are smart, creative, accomplished people and yet they share their precious resource of time with us. What an incredible honour.

I love my little guy. He rarely stops talking, but he’s awesome.

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 14:14:56 GMT

As a reminder, in the meta-tags, don’t link to `https://` items because it doesn’t work. I know Dave Winer takes a stance on this, but it’s infuriating because every generated link defaults to the secure option nowadays.

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 01:09:26 GMT

With the build bugginess, my copious notes of October 22 appear lost to the void of the homepage, although they do exist! I wonder if trying a build today will see it resurrected?

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 01:10:56 GMT

They were resurrected, but now October 21 is playing a disappearing act.

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 01:12:35 GMT

Hmm, now this very day is not appearing.

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 01:30:16 GMT

So coding for dates is not easy, as noted by Dave Winer. I think this means I need to park my use of Drummer for a while. This does make me appreciate micro.blog even more.

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 05:58:23 GMT

I wonder if this image of my head will work. I've used Dropshare to host the file, because setting up my own storage was too confusing for a mere mortal such as myself.

Drummer bugginess

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 05:29:04 GMT

Drummer has bugginess with respect to publishing across timezones. Days in the source are not publishing correctly to the outline. Until this is resolved, using Drummer is a bit of a no-go zone. October 22 has a bunch of content, but it's hidden in the published version.

Another bug with respect to some links I saved into R3 not appearing on Drummer's link page. They were working the other day. Is it me, or the service? I've checked the `head` settings which seem fine. The linkblog page from R3 is correct. So it must be a Drummer bug?

I've opened a GitHub issue regarding the R3 problems.

My conclusion at this point regarding Drummer: it's great but not yet ready for primetime. Definitely still a beta product. Which is fine - but I think I should hold off creating more content here until things settle down. And not being a coder myself, there's a limited amount I can contribute in terms of helping, rather than getting in the way.

October 22

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 22:05:42 GMT

What does the little page icon mean on this first node for the day, as oppposed to subsequent ones that simply have a disclosure triangle?

Today I would like to get micro.blog and Drummer connected. Shouldn’t be too difficult since Manton published an excellent how-to guide.

I also want to add a publish button to the Drummer sidebar.

As a creative project I’m incredibly proud of Hemispheric Views. I want to grow its audience because I’m convinced it’s better than 90% of the podcasts out there.

Is this a bug? I wake up this morning to discover all the additional OPML Headers I added to Drummer last night are no longer there.

I realise that a number of my posts also seem to have gone missing. I think I made a backup. Good thing this is a playground. Well, I made a backup, but it wasn't recent enough. Now I have to remind myself again how to insert images from links to other locations.
I had a nice little picture of a bunson burner. It's important this isn't an `https` link, I think. Or the problem was more likely that I had capitalised the meta tag.

Okay, so now I've restored most of the intent, if not the original content, of what I had last night. Now I need to make sure I download a local backup — and make that process part of my regular Drummer routine.

Fastmail has been hit with a major outage/DDoS attack today. I feel sorry for them. Why do people have to do this sort of thing to good services? I know... money. It's always money.

I have spent an hour playing around with Amazon S3, Dave Winer's Public Folder app and Drummer in an effort to create an online storage environment for hosted images. Until I got stuck, and took a minute to ask myself what I was doing? I don't want to become a sysadmin at that level. It will make me crazy. So I've stopped.

And now my Drummer blog has been hit with the timezone bug. Definitely US-centric design at the moment.

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 02:00:45 GMT

Amit has drafted an amazing guide to using Drummer.

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 01:58:13 GMT

Using Craft to take notes is lovely. I’ve also used Latex to craft a mathematical formula for the first time ever.

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 04:14:13 GMT

Do I start each new entry within a node at the bottom, as if it were a document, or at the top, as if it were a blog? Probably doesn’t matter, as long as the choice is consistent.

Can I insert an image somehow?

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 14:53:04 GMT

I couldn’t figure it out; I’ve sent a question to @amit and @jack via micro.blog.

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:50:06 GMT

It’s impressive to see what Jack Baty has done with his Drummer blog already. He now has it living on its own domain.

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:56:35 GMT

I did a lot of playing around with the Tufte theme on micro.blog today. It’s gorgeous, but fiddly. It uses custom Hugo tags as well which leads to a lot of breakage if I move away from the theme. I’ll have to do some thinking as to whether its worth keeping. I probably won’t ever use most of the tags, anyway.

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:58:08 GMT

Another 4km walk knocked over today. The only way I’m going to have a chance at losing any weight is to keep plugging away with exercise. My knees, hips, ankles and shoulders won’t permit exercise much beyond walking so I’ve got to make the most of it. It’s also great for my mental health which is something I have to monitor carefully.

Domain Name changes!

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 12:56:08 GMT

I decided to break everything. I registered `canion.blog` and have pointed it to micro.blog. I have no idea what will happen to everything that used to exist at `blog.andrewcanion.com`. As with all things DNS, time will tell.

Well, it seems to have worked, and https://canion.blog is alive.

If I can figure it out, using `blog.andrewcanion.com` might be a good address for this Drummer site.

I also have canion.me">canion.me that runs a Blot blog.

I have no shortage of blogs.

Tweets from andrewcanion on 20/10/21

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 12:05:27 GMT

Links

I had to deactivate three layers of ad-blocking to find the voting box…

Replies

@Liam_Santa Best promo ever? I think it might be.

RTs

RT @HemisphericPod: We’ve launched our latest brand extension, “Hemispheric Views Tourist Centre/Center”. As part of our huge launch, we’d…

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 12:19:46 GMT

I��ve been digging into my new ID site https://canion.omg.lol powered by omg.lol.

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 12:21:59 GMT

I walked to the other end of my neighbourhood and back: just short of 5km.

Tweets from andrewcanion on 18/10/21

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 12:22:57 GMT

Links

Patrons of @HemisphericPod have this upcoming live watch event to look forward to. If you don’t want to miss out, go to https://t.co/oQlEX4mXA8
I just supported maique madeira on @buymeacoffee! 🎉 You can support by buying a coffee ☕️ here —

Replies

@nblhistory We need more of this. 🖕
@KavanaghKent @dopeyjs @PerthWildcats You’re a legend, Kent! Now who is Adam Brennan?!