I got FeedLand running in my home lab, but why did I bother with it? Besides the obvious to find whether I can, one of the main reasons is to use it for managing my RSS subscriptions. Over time many of the sites I add to my subscription list stop being updated and it seems like a good idea to remove those sites from the subscription list and therefore cut down on the number of unnecessary updates being made by my feed reader. FeedLand provides a nice view of all my feeds sorted by when they were last updated, so I can go to the bottom of the list and remove sites that haven't updated in a year or more. #
Right now I am using the public version of FeedLand to check for updates at the beginning of the day, then throughout the day I use River5. The feeds are organized differently in FeedLand than River5 and that makes it easier for find older updates. River5 displays new items in a reverse chronological order so it's great to see the latest updates over the last several hours, but I find FeedLand a bit easier to use go back in time more than four hours. I just feel using the two provides me the best way to keep on top of everything. I also have River5 running locally and that server is in my Tailnet so that I can access it remotely. Now that I have an instance of FeedLand running that I know will be available so longa s I keep it running, I might transition to using just it. #
One thing that I am interested in is using FeedLand for linkblogging. I have used Radio3 for that but when I settled on a more direct way of adding articles to Readwise Reader for later reading I stopped using Radio3. As long as Radio3 is hosted by Dave it's a risk of being taken down, so using something else for a linkblog, if I want to even build a linkblog, is a good idea. #
I wonder if there are many real world uses for locally hosted LLMs? I have Ollama and some models on my Macbook but honestly, I just try them out and then don't do anything with them.#
- Here is a quick write up of how I got FeedLand running in my home lab. FeedLand is hosted using two LXC containers running in Proxmox, one is running mysql and the other is running feedland. After provisioning the mysql container using the PVE Helper script I logged in to the database as root and created the database, tables, and indexes using the SQL provided in the FeedLand install instructions. I then created a new mysql user with read/write access to the FeedLand database for use in config.json of the FeedLand app.#
- The second LXC container is running Debian 12 and I installed the latest version of nodejs. I then downloaded the FeedLand install zip file, expanded it and copied the required files in to the ~/feedland directory. I then went about editing config.json to align to my configuration. #
- At first I tried configuring FeedLand to use IP addresses for domain names hoping that would work but I could not get any browser I have to access the site, no matter the configuration. When I requested the site with the web console open the request appeared to redirect to https for access so fast I couldn't see anything appear in the console, so I then proceeded to configuring for access using https. #
- I have a handful of web applications running in my home network that are accessible over https via nginx. The key to how that works is using Duckdns.org for hosting the DNS A record of the IP address of a server running on my home network and nginx knows how to configure and use Let's Encrypt with Duckdns to provision, update, and store the SSL certificates. The IP address is local and accessible via the Internet so the URL will only properly resolve when I am at home or connected to my home network via VPN, which is why the nginx and Duckdns integration is important for authorization and provisioning of the SSL certificate by Let's Encrypt. I have minimal knowledge of Nginx and use the web app to configure it. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to make websockets work and I would see errors reporting that the app can not communicate with the server. At this point I decided to install and use Caddy in the Debian 12 container running FeedLand so that I could use the example configuration provided in the Feedlandinstall repo.#
- Next I had to figure out how to make Caddy work with Duckdns, which requires running Caddy with a Duckdns module that one installs using xcaddy. I found xcaddy requires the latest version of Go, which I installed and eventually got the Duckdns module installed for Caddy. To proxy the URL and handle SSL I had to add a tls section to the Caddyfile to specify using duckdns for the DNS and provide the Duckdns API token for authentication. The steps I followed are available in this article about using xcaddy and this article about configuring Caddy to use Duckdns.#
- One final piece to get FeedLand running was to configure it to use Wordpress for the identity management. I briefly looked at the Email configuration and got a confused by the instructions for AWS SES so switched to using Wordpress. #
- All of this worked and I could load FeedLand and log in but every attempt to do something, like add a feed, resulted in "Unable able to communicate with the server" errors. I saw in the browser console that there were mixed content errors occurring. The resolution was adding the a value for urlServerForClient such as "https://feedland.example.com/", being sure to include the slash at the end. I found this out by reading the config explanation but this value is not in the default config.json included in the file nor was there any mention about it in the instructions regarding using HTTPS. Before setting this value calls were being made to the myDomain value using http. #
This description of Sky, which is a Mac OS app in development that automates tasks but uses a LLM to understand a user's request, sounds very useful but I wonder how much will be the monthly subscription which will likely also require a monthly LLM subscription that will have its own cost. Hopefully they will make it work with locally hosted LLMs. #
- The solution to the on-screen keyboard usage issue is to install the Google Gboard keyboard from the play store. I configured it to use the split keyboard that moves the left and right sides of the keys toward the left and right sides of the display. The space bar is much wider and the auto correction works just as well as on my Android phones. All of this makes for as good a typing experience on the Go 7 as with any other device I use.#
- Boox sells a stylus that works with the Go 7 that costs $50, but that is not yet available to order in the United States. Fortunately, the Go 7 supports USI 2.0 (Universal Stylus Initiative), which means other branded USI 2.0 styluses should work and I bought this cheaper one on Amazon. Unfortunately, it now looks to be out of stock. #
- Stylus input and thus handwriting on the Go 7 is not very good mostly because the nib of the stylus is a hard plastic and you are writing on a glass screen. You have a similar experience writing on the Apple iPad using the Apple Pencil except that latency and pressure sensitivity is better with the Apple Pencil than most USI 2.0 styluses. In my opinion, because the handwriting capability is not going to be very good it's not worth spending a lot of money on a stylus. In fact, you really don't need the stylus to use the Go 7, which is why one is not included. #
- One final issue to report, as this Boox Go 7 has a monochromatic screen colors in apps are "translated" to different shades of black and in some instances the results are not very good. An example is Google Keep, note text displays pretty good but tap the add button to create a note and you see a dark background and black buttons but not text because it appears Google has dark text on those buttons. What I had to do is optimize the app, select Other Colors, and increased the Webpage Text Color to 20.#
One issue that I do have with using Android apps on the Go 7 is that I find its near perfect square size, it's 6 inches tall and 5.25 inches wide, makes typing using the on-screen a tad difficult. Boox has their own keyboard but it's space bar is not wide enough so I often hit either the comma (left) or period (right) keys when trying to to enter a space while typing with my thumbs. #
Scott Alexander reminds us that 1.2 million Americans died due to COVID, and any way you cut it that is a lot of loss of life. He also seems at a loss for what could have been done differently. I think there is one thing that could have been done differently, one lesson that should be learned from COVID, which is that disasters are no place for politics. We must have a point at which we are willing to see there is a common enemy and work towards defeating it. In my opinion too many of those 1.2 million Americans lost their life because of people too caught up in the blame game and got ya politics. #
As far as I can tell, little about the talk of the emerging AI "tools" is about their monthly cost. All of the good models cost at least $20 per month, which I think is too expensive and will create a digital divide. Some people are even paying $200 per month, which I just can't comprehend! #
Fortunately, when I woke up this morning I found a text message from Xfinity saying they had completed their work. If there was an Internet outage it must have occurred before I woke up. #
- I bought the Boox Go 7 e-Ink tablet, which is the second Boox tablet that I have purchased. The Boox Note Air 3C has become my primary "large screen" table that I use as an organizer and paper notepad and it is great for writing but can be too large for reading. #
- My interest in the Go 7 was piqued when I learned it has a seven inch screen, supports stylus input for handwriting, and cost $249. The downside is that the stylus is not included and that it doesn't use the Wacom EMR input as used on the Note Air 3C, which means the stylus has to be charged and the writing feel is going to be "plastic on glass" such as exists with the iPad. #
- The reasons to buy the Boox Go 7 are the resolution of the screen, how fast the screen refreshes, it's ability to run any Android app, it's size, and it's price. The Go 7 display is based on e-Ink, which is intended to look like paper and does not have back lighting. Text and pictures are drawn by applying an electrical charge to move micro capsules up or down and electricity is not needed to keep showing what is on the display, which means e-Ink displays use much less power than the LCD and OLED displays used by all other devices.#
- When e-Ink was first introduced in the mid-90s the speed at which display changes was noticeably slow. The slow refresh was tolerable for reading a book but if you flipped through the pages of the book quickly what you would see is a blur of changes as it started to draw text and then be disrupted by the page turn and the need to draw different text. #
- Even with slow refresh rates, the low power consumption of e-Ink coupled by the fact the displays are much easier on eyes because one is not starting at a panel light, made e-Ink desirable despite it's limitations and that lead to the success of Amazon's Kindle and competing products from Kobo and Barnes and Noble that are designed for reading books. People who bought these devices did so for the sole purpose of reading and had no expectation for playing games or watching video.#
- The display of the Go 7 is much more advanced than the the one in my Amazon Kindle Paperwhite or Barnes and Noble Nook. I can quickly flip through books or load web pages and scroll them up or done and see legible text. Text display is crisp and clear with the 300 DPI resolution and you can see higher resolution pictures and even video although the refresh rate, refresh rate, and lack of back light does not make for a good experience for watching video. #
- Unlike the Kindle, which exists for only to read e-books sold by Amazon, the Go 7 has the Google Play store and therefore one can install and run any Android app. Boox has their own UI for their tablets so one familiar with Android may not recognize the Go 7 and running Android, and in fact while Google is about to release version 16 the Go 7 runs version 13 of Android. If you have Kindle books all you have to do is install the Amazon Kindle app on the Go 7 to read them, but you can also install the Kobo, Nook, or even Bookshop.org app so you are not locked in to a specific e-book ecosystem. #
- I plan to use my Boox Go 7 primarily for reading but I have installed and handful of necessary (to me) Android apps: 1Password, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Syncthing, and Readwise Reader. Reader is my web read-it-later tool that is integrated with my prime information repository Obsidian and it works very well on the Go 7.#
- Google expects Calendar and Tasks to run on a device that has a color display, so some of the color to grayscale translation results in hard to read text. Had I bought the color version of the Go 7 this would not be an issue, but I think the black and white version is good for my needs and I have plenty of other devices with very good color displays. The color use in Tasks is not an issue and it works very well on the Go 7.#
I am really annoyed by Xfinity. Last week I received notice from them that they were doing improvements to their Internet service in my area on Monday, May 19, which was yesterday, and that I should expect intermittent outages. I had outages as expected and I was able to work around them, but then later in the day I got another message saying they couldn't complete work and would continue today. I woke up this morning to my Internet being down and having to scramble to connect to work meetings but got through them. Now I got another text saying once again they haven't completed the work and will let me know when they will be able to complete the work. Potentially three days of outages is not good service! #
Most in the know are critical of the current state of religion, and Christianity in particular. My opinion is the problem is that we are more religious than ever when you treat the definition of religion as simply re-ligamenting or re-binding. So called "organized" religions simply claim their sets of beliefs, loyalty tests, and rewards are better than other religions. Pick us, they say, over them. But what if the problem is religion itself? What if religion, like "the law" that Paul rights of, might be a good foundation is something we must move beyond in order to become more human, to be more Christ-like? Are we really called to believe in Christ or are we called to imitate Christ?#
Taillon gave up three home runs yesterday and the Cubs lost to the Marlins 1-3. On the one hand he has given up an alarming number of home runs over the last 10 innings that he has pitched, on the other hand most of those were solo home runs. It might be that Jameson is tipping pitchies, or it might be bad pitch selection or execution, but it is also the case that MLB is mostly all about home run hitting these days. By current baseball standards, the pitching staff holding the opponent to 3 runs or less puts the loss on the team's offense, the win on the opponents pitching. Shota also gives up a lot of home runs as did Kyle Hendricks in the past and my guess is the overall rate increase has more to do with changes in hitting and these style of pitchers. #
In think in this era what is most important is pitchers not walking batters and not giving up a high number of hits. You might even say that 3 home runs on only four hits is a very good pitching. The real measure is the number or hitters a pitcher allows on base, which is part of WHIP measures and Jameson's current WHIP of 1.11 is below is career mark of 1.20. Home runs alone is not necessarily the factor in wins and losses, it's home runes in comparison between the teams. The loss last night was not on the pitchers, it was on the Cubs hitting. #
In addition to the below, I also write drafts of posts for my primary blog here then copy that post from this Daynotes outline to my microBlog outline and run a script to publish it over there. In this manner Drummer really is my main writing tool/platform.#
- You may notice that the title of this site is Daynotes, but it probably should be Day Notes. The name is an homage to the first blogroll I participated in called the Daynotes Gang. People who participated in the blogroll were bloggers and fans of Jerry Pournelle. After his columns for Byte magazine wound down Jerry used his web site to publish his technology writing and his site included a daily journal written in a manner similar to what we now call blogging.#
- Speaking for myself, I imagined myself as an amateur technology pundit. During the early 2000s I even became a published author. My first blog was called Notes From The Cave. "The Cave" was a term for the room I lived in/studied in while in college that I transferred to mean the home office in our basement. What I wrote then were literally notes I wrote while in "the cave." #
- The first iteration of Notes From The Cave was written using EditThisPage, the first blogging platform developed by Dave Winer. By 2008 that platform was decommissioned and I moved to using WordPress, and that site continues on to this day. Today that Wordpress site is mostly an archive for posts I publish to other sites, but what I write here is not cross posted to it. #
- Daynotes is a daily outline written in Drummer and published by Dave's Old School blog CMS and hosted on Dave's server. I can save the source OPML files, but I do not have access to the web server that hosts this content. For that matter, Drummer is also hosted by Dave, and all this means that if Dave were to decide, he could stop hosting and I would be no longer able write these notes as I do today, and that would be a case for moving these Daynotes back over to Wordpress. #
- Lately I have been trying out Dave's latest app, Wordland, to write posts on Wordpress, but even if Dave were to take Wordland down the posts live on in Wordpress and can be edited using Wordpress's editors. Wordland is nice, but I really like writing in an outliner like Drummer, so I am included to keep doing what I am doing here until there is a real risk of it going away. #
Pete Rose and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson are now deemed no longer banned from baseball by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, which means they be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Whether they be elected is the real test of whether MLB accepts the hypocrisy that exists now that gambling has become a widely accepted across all sports. #
In an article in The Atlantic titled "The Missing Branch" writer Yuval Levin explains how the weakness of Congress has lead to expansion of the executive and judicial branches. We seem to have forgotten that the founder's solution to "no taxation without representation" was a two house Congress representing the people, the House of Representatives, and the states, the Senate. Congress is seat of the government, the President is there to execute the laws passed by Congress, and the Supreme Court is there to be sure the laws are within the bounds of the Constitution. Congress most important item of concern ought to be the preservation of its power to represent us, We The People, rather than making sure team Democrat or team Republican win.#
Missing from this article is any recognition by the Chief Justice that the U.S. Supreme Court has contributed the diminishing of the rule of law by decisions that make President above the law and turn money into speech. Every bad era of U.S. History has at its root Supreme Court decisions. #
The administration's rationalization of an obvious emolument is just the latest example of their contempt for the Constitution. The unwillingness to be bound by the Constitution and the brazen circumvention is to me an impeachable violation of Trump's oath of office. The Constitution does not give power, it' purpose is to restrain power. The Constitution does not give rights to citizens (see the ninth amendment), it prevents the government for taking away rights. To me, the Constitution is clear, the administration cannot accept an emolument without an act of Congress no matter whether or not the giver is getting something in return. #
The bullpen problems the Cubs had in their loss to the Mets yesterday is more of the same of the Hoyer era. Every season the Cubs rebuild their bullpen mostly from pitchers who were let go from other teams. When they do sign a free-agent reliever it is not when that person is at their prime but rather after their prime when they don't command as high a salary. Hoyer's plan for building a championship team is predicated largely on luck, but luck is not a strategy. No matter whether the Cubs win the division at the end of the season, Ricketts has only one question to answer and that is, based on his body of work, can Jed Hoyer build a consistently championship level competitive team? I think the evidence since 2017 is clear, he cannot and it is time for a change in direction. #
I am subscribed to the basic plan of micro.blog and that has served me well, but Manton might have just added a feature to premium that could cause me to consider upgrading.#
Just updated the firmware on the Note Air 3C and hope that doesn't cause problems.#
All the actions of the Trump administration results in impacts to the majority of citizens to the benefit of practically none of the citizens. In a practical sense, how does redirecting money from cancer research to homeland security and defense helps the average American? Consider that 1 in 3 men will get cancer during their life time. It would be one thing if Trump were cutting this spending and giving money back to citizens, but instead they just moving more money to the military industrial complex. #
My translation of this article about the Cubs closer role woes is that it is that it describes the obvious result of Hoyer constantly trying to build a bullpen by dumpster diving through other team's castoffs. #
Of course, the Obvious Guys have already got their shirts designed for Chicago's claim on the new pope. #
An American Pope? Never expected to see the day. One of my best friends is excited that he is from Chicago and apparently a Cubs fan and they both got their Masters of Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. I even spent a few nights at CTU the first time I ever traveled to Chicago on my own while my friend was still in school. The real important question though is the new Pope a fan of deep dish or thin crust pizza? #
We have had technical difficulties with this blog today. Looks like the OPML file somehow became mal-formed by a square bracket added to the end of the file. I downloaded my files, opened blog.opml and removed the extra character. I had to delete blog.opml from Drummer, recreate it and then import an OPML from a local file. #
When you import a local file it appears that the OPML headers are not included in the import, so I manually added each header individually and then tested to confirm the blog builds.#
The moral of the story is that it is really important to regularly download your files from Drummer. Fortunately I could download the current blog.opml file and correct it. #
I watched an interview today with economist Yanis Varoufakis about Trump's tariffs. He thinks that the actions and purpose are equivalent to the Nixon shock of 1971 that eliminated the convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold resulting in the U.S. dollar becoming a fiat currency. In short, the dollar changed from representing something tangible to representing the good faith of the United States, but that also enables the Federal Reserve to print as much currency as it wishes. #
The action created a floating exchange between the dollar and other currencies and it made the U.S. dollar the global reserve currency. As the global reserve currency the dollar is what is used by most countries in the world when buying goods and services with other countries, and it is what provides the U.S. with economic power over other countries in the world. Shutting off the flow of U.S. dollars to a country impacts that country's ability to trade with other countries.#
The action also decreased the value of the dollar and that resulted in an increase in the flow of capital in to the United States from other countries, but that increased flow also increased inflation and did not result in more jobs. Varoufakis says that Trumps actions have increased the flow of capital in to the United States but that is translated to rent-seeking rather than job growth.#
In other words, it is a scheme created by bankers for the wealthy to become wealthier and address a risk of United States losing economic power over other countries in the world under the claims increasing jobs for the middle-class. Nixon's actions and subsequent actions take by every President since has destroyed the middle-class in the United States. #
Read this Op-ed in the New York Times that I think correctly describes the reasons behind Project 2025 and what the Trump administration is doing. I think it can be summarized is that a group of people who think they are smart have deemed the republican democracy instituted by the U.S. Constitution is inefficient and that the only efficient form of government is a dictatorship. Democracy is inefficient by design to prevent tyranny. The problem the smart people don't seem to address is, what happens when they no longer like the person they elevate to the supreme presidency? Or worse, what happens to you when that supreme president no longer likes you? #
What ties together these thinkers? A conviction that executive governance combines maximal leeway to act with maximal power to execute decisions without second-guessing from civil servants or lawyers or deference to judges.#
The great danger of such a breathtakingly expansive view of executive power is that it threatens to transform the American presidency into a dictatorial office that disregards the separation of powers and seeks unchallenged primacy in its place.#
The problem is, the genie is already out of the bottle. How does Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court able to reign in President Trump and his handlers? Congress can start by passing a joint resolution that ends the states of emergency as per the 1976 National Emergencies Act and override the president's veto. #
I really like my Boox Note Air 3C but I also find it a bit large, which is why I am interested in a new e-Ink tablet announced by Boox, the Go 7 that has a 7-inch screen. The problem is that the Go 7 uses a different stylus that they are charging an extra $47 for it, but what I am most concerned about is whether it feels like a the "glass on glass" of the Apple Pencil and iPad as opposed to the paper like feel of using the EMR pencil on my Note Air. Besides the Go 7 being much smaller and thus could be more handy to carry around, it only costs $249.#
