I received an invite to the beta of the Readwise Reader app, which appears to be intended to be an all-in-one read it later app. It combines the function of Pocket and a RSS reader like FeedLand. I triage my RSS feeds and send articles that I want to read later to Radio3 where they are added to my linkblog feed, which you see in the Links tab above. I have a IFTTT applet that monitors the linkblog RSS feed and adds new items to Pocket. I am attempting to do the same with Readwise Reader by taking IFTTT out of the loop and subscribing Reader to my linkblog RSS feed. So far it doesn't appear as though Reader polls from RSS as fast as I would like.#

Hope to not jinx this, but I think these are the best COVID numbers that I've seen for community transmission in our county. #

Radio3 can now be used to share links to Mastodon, but it requires an account on Dave's Mastodon instance, which feels problematic.#

The many branches of the Fediverse is an interesting graphic that shows all the web apps built on ActivityPub.#

I've decided to try a Mastodon app, Tusky, on my Microsoft Surface Duo, which is neither my primary tablet or phone. I now have two "social network" apps on the Duo, micro.blog (official) and Mastodon (Tusky). #

Pocket has fixed the keyboard short cuts (again) in their web app. I find it funny how this seems to happen frequently, obviously their programmers seem to forget to include that code in their builds. #

Slowly working my way through building a new Active Directory domain controller. Done. I've created some users and groups, need to find information about organizational units.#

I am using Proxmox for my home lab, but the computer that is hosting it, which is a HP Probook, only has 8 GB of RAM. I am finding that 8 GB is enough when running containers, it is not enough when running VMs as they don't appear to share memory. Not sure whether there is a ballooning issue, I have to research more, but I am thinking I really want a host with at least 16 GB of RAM. #

I think that the only apps that I use that rely on Twitter as an identity provider are Dave's: Drummer, Little Outliner, Radio3, and FeedLand. It's also my experience that once I am logged in to these apps from a browser I stayed logged in unless or until I wipe the browser cache. It looks like Dave is considering replacing Twitter's Oauth for Mastodon should he need to, but only will make the switch if he needs to. I am wondering whether a federated system like Mastodon's is a good solution for identity. My guess is that a single, reliable, provider is a better option. If it were me right now, I think I would be looking at Github as the replacement. Fortunately, I switched my 2FA for Twitter to Authy some time ago.#

Once again the keyboard shortcuts in the Pocket web app has stopped functioning. It seems like every six months or so the keyboard shortcuts break.#

I had not thought of using my FeedLand list of feeds as a method of triaging feeds, but I think I get the idea. It enables me to quickly scan through the list and see which feeds recently updated, then drill down to any specific feeds that interest me. It's basically presenting feed items in an outline view, with nodes collapsed, that is different than a river view and a mailbox view. Surprising that the father of outliners didn't see it coming. Shows the value of watching how users user your product. The feed list updates automatically. #

Could I create my own fire hose feed? I publish to several different sites via different applications, but that is more a convenience for myself but actually a problem for any one who might want to follow me because they have to either check multiple sites or subscribe to multiple RSS feeds. #

The only inbound RSS apps are feed readers. I would like an app that took my RSS feeds to archive what I wrote. Something like DayOne that could take all of my RSS feeds and then publishes what I wrote on the web and via PDF for offline printing. Need to create a list of my feeds.#

Dave has produced two big products this year, Daytona and FeedLand. Right now all his attention and energy is going in to FeedLand because it is a reboot of his passion, RSS. However, for I personally think Daytona as a personal search engine is much more promising. I wonder whether Dave would ever add the ability to ingest one's FeedLand feed in to Daytona?#

I learned about another note taking tool called Mem via an article by The Verge. The article says that Mem is really a personal search tool, but it only searches through that which you pump in to Mem. The app claims to use AI to surface information, but there is no real way to try it without paying for a $10 per month subscription. Surprised that the app doesn't have a trial of their distinguishing feature so that I could see how it really stands out against Roam, Obsidian, or Logseq. #

I am going to upgrade my iPad Air to iPad OS 16.1.1. Hope Murphy stays away.#

For some reason the Harmony Hub that has been working reliably for me as started dropping connection with its cloud service. I rely on Harmony to coordinate navigation of my TV, soundbar and cable TV box and will miss it greatly if it stops working.#

A thing that I like about FeedLand is that my feed list is sorted by when it was last updated and it shows me when a feed was last updated. Now I can keep an eye on my feeds and remove ones that don't get updated regularly.#

So, I have connected a Bluetooth keyboard to the Microsoft Surface Duo and decided to load Drummer in Chrome to see whether I could type and enter a post. Oddly, Drummer doesn't render well in just on of the Duo's screens, but it works pretty well when I span across screens. Unfortunately the fold in the middle is a pain, but this could work in a pinch.#

Dave wrote about functionality provided by Facebook that I have with On This Day of my blog. It would be cool to have something similar for Old School blogs, perhaps its functionality that could be added to Daytona. I usually start my day in front of a computer by opening my On This Day page.#

I've created a node in my Projects outline for my Microsoft Surface Duo learning.#

It appears that FeedLand is merging of Radio3 and River5 functionality. Dave announced the ability to post items to a feed, but the docs don't explicitly tell one what is the URL for their own feed, you need to click the Feed link next to My Feed. The URL format for a FeedLand user's feed is: http://data.feedland.org/feeds/[username].xml, for example my feed is: http://data.feedland.org/feeds/frankm.xml. #

I ordered a refurbished Surface Pen to use with my new Microsoft Surface Duo that arrived today. Discovered that Microsoft now prevents the Surface Duo from pairing with the pen, which means that while the stylus works for touching the screen and writing the buttons on the pen do not work because the buttons use Bluetooth. Apparently in the past there has been issues with battery drain on the Duo due to how the pen communicates via Bluetooth. I place this in the category of "buyer beware" when buying old stuff. Not sure how much the lack of buttons will matter, they are mostly used for launching apps or switch modes, but I an still write in OneNote and the "eraser" works too so probably good enough.#

I have obtained a Mastodon address (account? ID?) via TWiT.social: @frankm@twit.social. You can follow me via my Mastodon profile. There is also a Mastodon address for my blog: @frankm@frankmcpherson.blog. #

When I took the Pixel Watch off the charger this morning it continued to think that it was on the charger. The screen would go blank and when I tapped it then it would show the charging status. I went into settings and did a restart, which then got "stuck" showing "Restarting...." Found out that to force a shutdown you need to press and hold the two buttons until the screen blanks. #

This thread on reddit suggests there are problems with Android 12L on the Surface Duo, so perhaps I should not be so anxious to get it. It's not clear to me whether the devices locked to AT&T are receiving the upgrade yet. (Ah yes, dependency on carriers for upgrades, it has been a while since I have personally encountered that bug due to my use of Google Pixel devices.)#

Update, I have found where I can configure apps to span automatically, and I have configured Outlook and Gmail to work accordingly. However, I am finding the functionality is really janky. For example, if I click a link within an email then Gmail switches to single screen mode and it seems the only way I can get it back to spanning is by relaunching the app. I wonder whether Android 12L fixes any of this behavior? #

On Friday I ordered the Microsoft Surface Duo at a heavily discounted price for the sake of playing with a dual screen device. My understanding is that Android 12L is available for it, but so far my Duo only has Android 11. I am most surprised by how little the Microsoft apps are optimized for the dual screen. For example, I expected a way to configure Outlook so that when I open an email the email message opens in the opposite screen, but it doesn't unless I physically move Outlook to span across both screens. #

Some day Republicans will wake up to find themselves in a world they do not want to live in. A fundamental tenant of the "rule of law" in the United States is that one is innocent until proven guilty, which means that the one, usually the State, who brings charges against another to a court has the burden to prove their charge, and in criminal cases beyond a reasonable doubt. Nearly all charges made by Republicans are void of proof and begs anyone who will listen to simply accept their charges. In that world, one ends up in jail simply because a powerful person wants them in jail. #

I don't normally read/use Twitter, though all of blog posts are cross-posted to it. Given the events of the day, I opened Tweetbot on my iPad to see whether as Dave claims today may be historic. Didn't stay long, too much shouting and screaming. It's easy folks, just don't load Twitter and move along. #

I am probably going to be the weird one who likes Stage Manager on macOS. #

Looks like micro.blog is back online, they got affected about an outage at Linode, who is their hosting provider. Posts I've written using Drummer have not published, but the one that I just created directly did publish. Not sure whether the post that I originally posted from Drummer will ever appear, I actually haven't used that publish script in a while. #

I've upgrade my Macbook Air M1 to Mac OS Ventura and now I am poking around to see what's new. I am always surprised that Apple does not provide any type of "intro to Ventura" upon first boot. #

It appears something has gone sideways at micro.blog, the site is not responding though my blog is still accessible.#

I've added an entry for the Pixel Watch to the Every Day Tech section of my technology outline.#

One of the most confusing to me parts of Wear OS 3 is the Recents menu that I access by pressing the top button on the Pixel Watch. While the last app I open is added to the list, it doesn't stay on the list and Wear OS keeps putting entries in the list that I don't open like Personal Safety and YouTube Music. I think the only items that should be in the Recents menu are the apps that I actually last launched. I don't mind Wear OS putting stuff on the list it thinks I may want to use if their are open slots, but the apps I do launch should stay there until they fall off, if a "first in first off" flow.#

Does capitalism really work in an authoritarian state? It doesn't seem to me that corporations and private equity fully assess the risk that Republicans represent to their existence.#

Whenever I write something in this daynotes log that I might want to remember, I add "Note to self:" to item like I did below so that it appears is a Daytona search. #

Note to self: When adding one world entries to your glossary.opml, put a space before and after the word so if the word is included in a URL that string isn't replaced by the glossary entry.#

Looking at the Drummers River that Andy Sylvester runs and I notice that I am pretty much the only person who writes title-less posts, or so it seems. An annoyance with River5 is how it uses the bold font face of a title for the titleless post. Just added the feed of this site to FeedLand and I notice the river version renders very nicely.#

Good morning! It's a foggy morning in West Bloomfield, Michigan.#

There is a concept in the United States that "gridlock" leads to compromise, but while that may have been the case in the "good ole days" that certainly is not the case now. Gridlock in Washington leads to nothing but more finger pointing. #

I really don't get what Republicans stand for. What are their values beyond hating Democrats? All I hear is how Biden and the Democrats are the blame for everything and I don't hear about any specific plan. (Just like they blamed Obama for every ill when he was in office.) And I never hear a Republican talk about democracy or freedom or anything that doesn't sound like anarchy. #

Wrote Rebooting RSS. I like FeedLand a lot, but I am concerned about it being entirely hosted by Dave. I wish he provided it like he did 1999 and River5, which I can git clone to my own server. As I was about Drummer, I am surprised that Dave is taking on the burden of hosting and operating applications for others because eventually something will go wrong and people will get made and that will not end well. But, what do I know? I know that he will never take my advice. #

Ever since I began wearing the Pixel Watch my fitness data has been going to Fitbit and Exist.io. Today learned about Health Connect that provides a way to sync the data from Fitbit to Google Fit. I am hoping this allow me to use the Google Fit widget on my Pixel 4a to monitor my steps. #

Hello to the first day of November, it is a beautiful fall day here in southeast Michigan! #

Because I was traveling last week I failed to make note of the one year anniversary of Drummer and this Daynotes site. #

Someone posted to micro.blog that Mastodon is the new Google Reader, which I disagree with. As far as I can tell, FeedLand is the new Google Reader. FeedLand makes discovering and managing RSS subscriptions easier, but to get that benefit you need to rely on Dave's platform. River5 can be entirely self hosted and self managed. #

Today is the first day since it became available to me that I am using FeedLand on a desktop, and I am comparing it with my instance of River5. I don't know how long a item remains in the FeedLand river.#

Good news for me is that I can send items to my Radio3 linkblog, which is monitored by a IFTTT automation to add to Pocket for reading later. The re-tweet icon is a bit odd for sending/sharing out, I think the more normal "sharing" icon that River5 uses makes more sense. #

I figured out how to get a copy of my RSS subscriptions into Drummer and make it a public OPML file that I could subscribe via URL. It took several runs because of bad feeds, but I got most of my subscriptions in to FeedLand. #

I am traveling this week and therefore have not had much time to fully check out FeedLand. Now that I have an account I do see how as an app it is an improvement over River5. With River5 I have to use LittleOutliner to maintain my subscription list whereas I can do that directly within FeedLand, and that is a definite improvement. I am not sure whether I am in to the "social" aspect of FeedLand but I can imagine moving to FeedLand from River5. First step is to move my RSS subscriptions to FeedLand. #

Whenever one currently reads about the U.S. Supreme Court what you usually see are the current numbers of "conservative" and "liberal" justices, and the point made they are currently more "conservative" justices and thus the court is "conservative." But, are those justices really conservative? The Dobbs decision, perceived as "conservative" basically states that the Constitution does not provide a right to abortion, and thus overturned Roe. I find that premise odd and in conflict to my understanding of American Conservatism which holds natural rights above all and defines the purpose of government and the Constitution that establishes it as being for the preservation of the rights.#

It's not the purpose of the U.S. Constitution to define the rights of the citizens of the United States and the prime evidence for this is the ninth amendment. Governments that claim and enforce sole power to declare what rights citizens have are considered tyrannical (in 1700 terms) or authoritarian. In fact, that was the very type of thing King George was doing to the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War and why there was a Declaration of Independence. #

We ought to not call the current U.S. Supreme Court as conservative at all, and the "conservative" justices are really fundamentalist ideologues who really seek to assert their world view, which has Christian Nationalist leanings because they feel their religious freedoms have been overrun by things like the U.S. government allowing abortions and gay marriage. These so-called conservative justices were put in place by The Federalist society that actually has been pretty open about how they are not themselves conservatives but are using the cloak of conservatism to obtain what they want. #

As an aside, we really need a discussion about what is religious freedom because some seem to think that granting rights to others somehow impinges on their religions freedom. Religious practice and the freedom to practice a faith does NOT give one the right to compel others to comply to your practices and beliefs. Allowing gay people to marry does not take away from a religious belief that gays should not marry nor does it compel churches to perform gay marriages. In short gay marriage does not impact your religious freedom in any way, it simply requires you to co-exist with people who do not practice your religion or hold your beliefs. #

Dobbs does not conserve rights, instead it takes away the right to liberty of women to make decisions about their bodies when they are pregnant that Roe confirmed. Dobbs narrows the definition of liberty, which is for conservatives is a fundamental natural right, one of the three specified in the Declaration, and thus is not really a conservative decision. Dobbs makes that decision by having sought and not finding literal statements of abortion being a right in the Constitution, and the act and consequence is the very reason why Madison did not originally incorporate content of the "Bill of Rights" in the Constitution and why the ninth amendment was included. #

Finally, any government act, be it court decisions or legislation that takes away rights is dangerous, which is why the idea that rights are owned by citizens as stated by the ninth is so important. I believe Dobbs has dangerous unintended consequences. It really states liberty does not extend to everyone's natural right to control what happens to their bodies. For example, people who do not want vaccines and declare their right to control their body ought to be concerned because it seems government can in fact compel you to do things to your body that you do not want. People are dying from COVID, so to preserve the right to life of those at risk, you MUST take the COVID vaccine is not a stretch due to the Dobbs decision. #

I really wish there was a broad conversation about what exactly is American Conservatism. What exactly do these people think they are conserving? What are their core values? I thought American Conservatism was at its core about preventing tyranny, which would really mean abhorring the idea of a powerful President. I thought their prime directive would be to maintain the checks and balances between the branches of government, and basically to maintain the good things that the Founders of the United States established. #

I think fundamental to that prime direct is that the means are as important as the ends. For example, one may define "preventing tyranny" as preserving liberty, but that must mean liberty for everyone. In other words, you can't be preserving your liberty at the expense of someone else's liberty because that is exactly what is tyranny. Putin's tyranny preserves his liberty and the liberty of his supporters at the the expense of the liberties of others who do not support him. #

What appears to really be occurring is people looking out for their own perceived rights and could care less about the rights of others. From a winner's perspective it's most expedient to have a "benevolent" dictator to preserve their rights rather than a messy democracy that relies on the community to preserve rights. Such a mindset doesn't really care about democracy or maintaining checks and balances or preventing tyranny of the other so long as they are the winners. The problem is that when you put the preservation of your rights in the hands of a small number of people you become beholden to their whims. One day a person like Trump loves you because he sees you as a loyal follower, and the next day Trump hates you for reasons you don't know and your rights become taken away. #

It appears that Comcast has boosted the speed of our home Internet. I just ran a speed test that produced 233 MB mbps download and 11.9% upload. The upload speed is not changed. Personally, I would rather see Comcast get rid of their data caps rather than boosting the speeds, incremental increases really does not do much. The pandemic showed that the caps are unnecessary and artificial. #

iPadOS Version 16 with Stage Manager is going to be released on October 24. I am not sure this version is going to add much to my iPads that don't have the M1 processor. As an aside, I think the iPad will never get the M series processors, that will be reserved for the Pros and Airs while the iPad and iPad Mini will stay on the iPhone processor (A series Bionic) line. For now it looks like the only reason to buy an Air over the iPad is to get the M series processor and Apple Pencil 2. #

I ordered the fourth generation iPad Air two years ago. Today Apple announced the 10th generation iPad that is basically the same as that fourth generation iPad Air except that this new iPad will still use the first generation Apple Pencil! It seems crazy to me that Apple would want to keep producing two different models of the Apple Pencil. The only reason I can think of is that they assume this will be an upgrade for current generation iPad owners who if own an Apple Pencil would not to replace it, but that is going to happen sooner or later! Apple could just do a trade in for the first to second generation pencil for a 40% discount or something. #

Of course, Apple also announced the new iPad Pros with the M2 processor. Starting price is $799. Apple now sells an iPad for nearly every price point ranging from $499 for the iPad Mini, to that $799 or above. $599 gets you a low end iPad Air, $449 gets you the low end 10th generation iPad.#

I see that Fossil has officially released their Gen 6 smartwatches that I believe are running Wear OS 3. Fossil has several different designs but the one I linked to they are calling their "Wellness Edition." I note that it has two buttons, prior versions only had one extra button beside the crown. Compared to the Pixel Watch, the Wellness Edition has a 44 mm case, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. #

Getting a firmware update for the Pixel Buds Pro. The app says the update can occur while I am listening to audio. Listening is a sure way to be certain the buds are connected to the phone. Now I am rebooting my earbuds, while they are in my ear. Reboot is complete and I see now that under Sound we now have an Equalizer option with five presets (Heavy bass, light bass, balanced, vocal boost, and clarity) and the ability to customize upper treble, treble, mid, bass and low bass. Trying to figure out the difference between balanced and clarity. Balanced has a lower treble setting and emphasizes upper treble, clarity turns up treble and slightly turns up bass and low bass. For the moment I am leaving it on clarity. It would be nice if I could switch between presets via a touch control on the buds. #

Self, do you want to manage your RSS feeds in an app hosted by someone else? My gut says that will not end well. #

I use the Spark app to read email on my iPads, smartphones, and on my Mac. I've noticed that the Spark app uses the most storage on my iPad, almost 8 GB worth. The app directly accesses email from one's server but it also caches that email locally on the device so that it can be read while to connected. Unfortunately, the Spark app does not provide a way to clear the cache. The vendor says others have have requested clearing cache to be a feature but the work around is to uninstall the app then reinstall it.#

As far as I can tell, Feedland is still not a product that I could install for myself, correct? #

I remain skeptical that the intended Google Tablet is going to be a compelling device. I understand Google's strategy of positioning it as a "2-in-1" smart home device, because they have to differentiate from Apple and Samsung. Dock it and it is a Nest Hub Max, grab it and it is a tablet. The Nest Hub Max costs $174, is that how much Google is going to charge for the new tablet & dock? How many Nest Hubs has Google sold? If Google sells this as a tablet, they aren't going to sell any, as I see it the only way they sell is if they literally replace the Nest Hub or at least add it to the Nest Hub line. #

Out for delivery. A geek's favorite three words, with some trepidation of whether FedEx will actually deliver to our house.#

I ordered the Pixel Watch last week when it was announced and today I received notification from Best Buy that it shipped. I am anxious for whether FedEx will deliver it to my house or to another location in our condominium. Once past the delivery, I am most curious about how the migration will happen between my current Mobvoi TicWatch E3 to the Pixel Watch. In the past the out of box experience of replacing on Wear OS watch with another has been less than stellar. Will I have to manually install apps?#

I also am wondering how the transition from Google Fit to the Fitbit app will work. I now four years of data in Google Fit, will there be a way to migrate that to Fitbit? I have Google Fit on my phone, if I have the Pixel Watch working with Fitbit and then take a walk wearing the watch and carrying my phone, will my steps be tracked by both? Seems like an opportunity for duplicate data, and I am wondering whether Google even thought about this use case, I won't be surprised if they don't. #