The more articles I read about COVID19 the more frustrated I get with the lack of availability of affordable rapid testing in the United States. Throughout the pandemic we have suffered from the desire for certainty and perfection. Perfection is the enemy of the better. Rapid tests won't detect all cases, so they don't guarantee one is not infected, BUT if a rapid test is positive you then clearly know you are a threat to spreading the infection to others and should defintely stay home, which is more information than the average person has before they walk out the door.#
A few weeks ago I read The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral by Mike Caulfield and it really resonated with me. In my mind almost all of what I write on the web is part of my own garden, even though I do that writing using blogging tools that are more stream than garden.#
For me outlines provide a valuable structure overlay to digital gardens and they can also help redirect streams in a such a way as to flow through the gardens, for an example look at my technology outline. Here is a link to my digital garden. #
MLB Free Agent signings are picking up and so far the Cubs are sitting on the sidelines. I am starting to be pessimistic about the ownership's commitment to being competitive, there is the appearance of just collecting money from Wrigley Field tickets, betting, and all the non-baseball operations. In other words, a repeat of prior ownership that lead to 100 years of playoff futility. I really wish Mark Cuban had bought the team when he had the chance, I would not doubt his commitment to winning. #I am connecting the Macbook Air to the BenQ Monitor, which I have configured as the primary display with the display extending to the internal display of the Macbook. I expect the macOS dock should appear on the BenQ but I haven't figured out how to make it consistently appear. It seems if I move the mouse cursor to just the right spot at the bottom of the display then the dock appears and stays, but not until then. If I move the mouse to the bottom of the internal display the dock then appears there and goes away from the BenQ. Given Apple's reputation, I am surprised by this inconsistent behavior.. or perhaps this is just user error?#
Good morning. We are back to work and today is the first day that I am using the Raspberry Pi upgraded to Debian Bullseye. It might just be me, but it feels like it is running a little faster. If memory serves, I believe the graphics rendering as using a different engine so that might account for the performance difference.#
I just received the leather sleeve I ordered for my Macbook Air from Mission Leather Company and it fits perfectly. I love the smell of leather. #
- I am currently upgrading the Raspberry Pi 4 that I use as my personal desktop during the work day from the version of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian Buster to the one based on Debian Bullseye. The recommended upgrade path is a fresh install but I have this computer configured as I like and don't want to start over unless I must, so I am trying to upgrade first by following these instructions. #
- Found two problems after doing the upgrade. First, the WiFi network connection was not working, and I found a discussion thread that had the fix for me: add systemd.restore_state=0 rfkill.default_state=1 to the end of the line of /boot/cmdline.txt.#
- Next, Conky was not loading, which I fixed by uninstalling and then reinstalling.#
- Unfortunately, I am still having problems connecting to a Samba share that is hosted on Linux Mint. Whenever I try to connect to the share I see the message: "Unable to mount location Failed to retrieve share list from server. Invalid Argument."#
Today I am reminded of the awesomeness of the Internet. Two, sites worth bookmarking: screaming in Iceland and WindowSwap. You are welcome!#Without a doubt, I write more blog posts when I use Drummer than other writing tools. I think it ha to do with the fact that I can see all of the day's worth of posts on the screen rather than fragmented across pages or even within "boxes" on a page. Something psychological, I guess. Like I am working on one document, although the paragraphs are disjointed. And I agree with Dave that there is less friction between writing and publishing.#
On a whim, I opened my Fedwiki Updates page in Firefox on the Macbook Air and surprised to find that the roster now loads. Did I try loading that page in Firefox before? Maybe not because it still doesn't load in Chrome. Curious. #
A Drummer scripting question. Can I write a script to copy the current outline node to another outline file? Right now I am publishing some of what I write in Drummer to both my Old School, Daynotes site and to my main blog by coping what I write in one OPML file to the other OPML file. I think it would be handy to have a script to automate that task for me.#
An observation. The 2020 edition Macbook Air is one substantial piece of metal. Not only does it handle compute processing like butter, but it can probably stop a bullet and do serious damage if I used it to hit someone at the right spot. I don't think any computing device I've ever owned has felt this metallic. #
I've been monitoring the COVID data pretty much since it has been published, but I am embarrassed to admit that I just now found the COVID ActNow site, which does the best job of presenting and explaining the data of all the other sites I've seen. Unfortunately, the data for Michigan looks awful. The only good news for myself is that the county in which I live has a lower vulnerability rating because of having a higher vaccination rate.#
I've written before and I will say it again, the favorite feature of my micro.blog site is the On This Day page. I really want to write a script that pulls the blog posts that I have written on a given day from all of my blog sites. I know that I could try to import my old blog posts in to the micro.blog site, but it feels like those posts should remain in the domain they where written in, though it does mean I have writing strewn all over the Internet. Sorry. #
I received an email offerring a Black Friday discount on a upgrade for Parallels that I went ahead and purchased because I was planning to buy it anyway. As a result I am currently building a VM running Windows 11 for ARM. I have a similar build on an SSD connected to a Raspberry Pi 4, and now I am contemplating whether to keep that build or reuse the SSD for something else. #
Thermometer says that it is 24 degrees outside. Do I break down and put on the snow pants for my morning walk or just a thicker pair of sweats? Update: I put on thicker sweats. #
We have an Airthings Wave Mini, which is an air quality monitor, in the basement where we work. The key pieces of information it provides are the amount of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the air and the risk for mold growth. It sounds like knowing the amount of VOCs is a good thing, but the problem we are having is relating what Airthings says it measures as VOCs to what we have in the basement. In short, none of the items they list as producing VOCs are present in our basement and yet we see the graph go up and down. #- The obvious correlation seems to be the furnace and air conditioning, and yet the Airthings site makes no mention of these items in their documentation. Another correlation seems to be when we are actually in the basement because that means there are usually computers or televisions running, not to mention our own breathing. What I've found disappointing is that Airthings does not provide any information about how to interpret the data collected by the Wave Mini to make decisions. They provide a dashboard of graphs showing the data over time, which makes sense, but should I be more concerned about spikes or averages over time? The use of graphs suggest I should be most concerned about averages, but averages can be skewed. If the numbers go down while we are not in the basement but go up when we are in the basement, is that a problem? #
- So, what to do about this? We are talking about a basement, so it's not like I can open a window. I am thinking that if there is a problem the best we can do is a get an air filter, which then begs the question, which one(s) to get given the space? #
I think I am going to use Firefox for a while on the Macbook Air. Given that macOS shortcuts are new to me, using a different browser shouldn't be too traumatic. #
Wondering what is the best browser to use on my new Macbook Air? My normal primary browser is Chrome and that serves me well except for one small issue with selecting text in Drummer and Little Outliner. In Chrome I can't select text with the mouse in these apps after a period of time. Does the same problem exist with Firefox? I am going to check, as I have installed Firefox.#
I am growing more and more frustrated with the finger print scanner on my Google Pixel 4a. It just doesn't reliably recognize my finger print, and I never had that problem with the prior Pixel 2. I do need to remember to clean the scanner more frequently, but again that is not something I had to worry about with the prior phone. #
As far as I can tell, Dave thinks people will mostly use markdown in titled posts. #
Testing a couple of new things in Drummer today. Below you see the use of markdown to render a quote. I am struggling to determine the best way handle quote attribution. Decided on a lead in to the quote and a simple source anchor link. #
As noted yesterday, both test positivity rate and new cases are rising in Michigan, indicating increased community spread. New cases are highest among young people, and while they are not as high risk for death, they present a risk of spreading the disease to people who are at risk.#
Detroit's William Beaumont Hospital:#
"What we’ve seen is that generally around 65-70% of all of our COVID patients in the hospital at any given time are unvaccinated,” Gilpin said. “That holds true for any COVID patient who comes into the hospital. That number is also approximately the same for our ICU patients." source#
- I like the idea of markdown node types in Drummer to add more control over telling Old School how to render text. At a node level it probably makes more sense to use markdown for formatting that applies to the entire node. Great for quotes and code blocks, for example. Typeface formatting like bold and italics can be done in Drummer via standard control keys. #
- When using Drummer to write stories (essays, pages, etc...) I would like to be able to add an OPML head that would tell pagePark that the entire OPML source file has markdown formatting. We could start with just using markdown inline to indicate heads, lists, etc.. but would love it if at some point pagePark would simply treat parent nodes as H2s rather than the collapsable heads it renders today. #
- Today pagePark renders an OPML source to what I call a HTML outline format, for example see this page, which I like for some cases but not all. In other cases I want the document that I write in Drummer to render to a standard, flat HTML page in which parent nodes are simply treated as H2s. I think support of a markdown rendering directive in the OPML head would be a great way to accomplish this. #
- While I am thinking about it, I'll note here that what I really want is for Drummer to support the Story format that was in Fargo. A story format renders an OPML file into a single HTML page, in a manner much like what you see when you click the head link above except that I could define a different page header graphic and the title for the page would replace the blog title. #
I've been away from Drummer for several days, so I am just catching up on the change notes. I see that Dave made a change that removes the requirement of a type attribute to publish nodes via Old School. #
My wife and I got our COVID-19 booster shot yesterday, and it appears that Michigan has had the second highest number of new cases in the United States over the last seven days. My healthcare network says Michigan is in it's fourth COVID wave. The vaccine and booster are good news, as is the fact that Pfizer has a antiviral pill that appears effective in treating COVID. As the timeline moves along doctors and scientists learn more about preventing and treating this disease, but is only effective if we listen.#
I am starting use my Macbook Air M1 more and I have to say that for a long time Windows user, MacOS feels like an entirely different world. Having experienced similar feelings with my iPads, I continue to be surprised that Apple doesn't provide better starting/transition points for new users.#
I like my Google Pixel 4a but I do find the finger print scanner frustrating because it doesn't consistently recognize my finger. It seems that if I don't place my finger just "so" the scan doesn't work and just won't until it has time to reset. #
I see some folks having issue with the need to assign a type to a node in order for it to be published via the Old School publisher. I get the desire to just start writing and hitting ENTER to start a new paragraph. My thought is that it should be pretty easy to write a script that would assign type = outline to each node subsequent node. In the meantime, I'll just mention that one can always manual add the outline type to nodes via the briefcase in the toolbar, or click the plus button and move the nodes around after, which is a benefit of writing in an outliner.#
Tested the changes to Drummer that Dave released today, both in Drummer and in Electric Drummer. I am looking forward to seeing what is possible for the integration of Github to Drummer. #
Searched for information about connecting the Macbook Air M1 to the Anker PowerExpander USB-C Dock and found a Reddit thread with a link to the DisplayLink Manager for MacOS that I downloaded and installed. An icon is added to the Launchpad and there is a status bar icon. I am now able to connect the Macbook to the dock and the monitor is recognized and display appears. Looks to be 4K at 60 Hz, ran the YouTube 4K HDR video and it looks nice. Curious though that the status icon shows no monitor connected.#
I installed the Evernote application on the Macbook Air and it has been a while since I've spent any amount of time in the full desktop version of the app. The desktop application has come a long way since I was using it heavily in Windows, and may be useful enough to start using more. #
Full screen or windowed? I might need to make up my mind. #
An interesting aspect to my getting set up on this Macbook is that I am more an iPadOS user, which means in some ways I am migrating from iPad to the Mac. My mindset is, which of the apps I run on the iPad have a Mac counterpart? For example, Spark is my preferred email app for not only iPad but Android too so I searched for and found it in the Mac app store. #
I went in to the terminal on the Macbook and typed git --version and saw a dialog saying it needed to download and install Command Line Developer tools, which I told it to do. #
Still think the coolest experience I have with Apple products is now the Airpods just work between devices. All I did was flip open the case in the presence of the Macbook, popped in and started playing some music and they connected and worked. Why can't Apple do the same thing with the Pencil 2? #
Now that I am back to using a Mac I realize there is a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts that I need to retrain my brain to use.#
I have a new laptop computer, a Macboook Air, that I bought at an actual computer store. It has been a long time, since well before the pandemic, that I have been in an actual computer store. In fact, it was probably this same store, a Microcenter. Fifteen years ago one could find several stores like CompUSA and Fry's in metropolitan areas, but they are now all pretty much gone, succumbed to big box consumer electronics stores like Best Buy or to online sites like Amazon. I didn't realize how much I missed wandering through these stores until today. Unlike like the sterile big box stores, there is a definite geek vibe to a true computer store. While I didn't set out to do it, I am happy that I bought this computer in that store.#
If you use the outline rendering feature of Drummer and you want to have nodes render as collapsed as I do on my technology page, add an attribute called collapse to the parent node and set its value to true. I wish there was a simple way to expand and collapse all heads on a page, I propose clicking the page title as an option, or perhaps include a button like the XML icon that displays as the top right of the page.#
The PagePark rendering of OPML that Dave wrote about here is how I have been rendering my now page as well as my technology page. I think of these as single page web apps because they include the scripting to expand and collapse headlines. I tested Dave's new instance of the PagePark OPML rendering he set up for Drummer using the outline I created last year of all the books that I read in 2020. Now, while I link how PagePark renders OPML into an outline format in HTML, there will be times that I want parent nodes to be treated as standard HTML heads rather than as an outline node. So, in my opinion PagePark does get all the way to producing standalone web pages. It seems to me that this could be handled by a OPML header, say something like "htmlFormat" that took as values outline and standard.#
As I stated earlier, I am in the market for a new Macbook Air with 512 GB of storage. I read this morning about a $200 discount on these devices at Amazon, and I in fact found the model I wanted for $1,049 but I didn't really want to buy from Amazon because the debit card I want to use to pay for it is not associated to that account. I checked BestBuy.com, but they never had the 512 GB model for sale at that price, in fact they removed it from their listing on the site until Amazon was out of stock. I have to decide how I want to buy this because I don't think I want to be playing these flash sale games. #
A new version of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian Bullseye has been released. Unfortunately there is no real upgrade path so if I want to "upgrade" my Pi desktop I will need to rebuild on to new storage, which is not the most appealing endeavor. #
Kevin Tofel is tinkering with something that I want, which is the ability to query all of my personal repositories for information that I have stored. Kevin's solution is basically creating an operational data store and importing your information in to it, in his case via JSON. In my mind all the whole export/import approach could get hard to manage. I much rather be able to do API calls to the systems that have my information and get results back. So, if I want to query my repositories for what I've stored about COVID-19, it would make API calls to Evernote and Roam and get results back. The point is, the gist of what Kevin is doing is what I want rather than what Dave wants.#
- Pfizer has been working on a pill to treat COVID-19, they said results look promising but they haven't been fully vetted. Currently, remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, is the only antiviral approved by FDA for treatment of Covid-19. It's given by intravenous infusion, so it's not as simple to administer as a pill. #
- People can also be treated with monoclonal antibodies, which are injected or infused therapies that kickstart the immune system to help fight off infection. They are not as easy to take as a pill and must be administered by a trained professional.#
- Merck is seeking FDA emergency use authorization for molnupiravir, an antiviral capsule people could take at home. It's been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by about 50%. On Thursday, UK drug regulators authorized molnupiravir under the brand name Lagevrio.#
I am in the market for a Macbook. While I like and advocate Chromebooks, I recognize that all the cool software that I want to play with is only available for Mac. #
To use Drummer fully as a writing tool, I need to be able to create stories, which I think are standalone HTML pages that are not embedded in the blog. I would link to a story using a link type, such as I do below, or even write an intro blog post to link to the story. In the context of Dave's prior work, there is prior art: Fargo had support for a story publishing format, that was basically a blog based on post titles rather than on the Old School date format. Back then stories could even have their own header graphic, here is one of my favorite examples of a story that I wrote using Fargo and published with the Fargo Publisher.#
I don't see a way out, 50 million people are not going to change their minds any time soon. Democrats are too afraid to fight, so the DOJ will not do anything meaningful. When Democrats start putting Republicans in prison, then Republicans will start putting Democrats in prison because there is no more rule of law and everything is considered political. We will have to adapt and endure. Probably need to start to take a serious look at how normal people live in Russia and Hungary as that is the clear template for the Republicans. Still, I am shocked to find myself witnessing the end of democracy in the United States during my lifetime. By the time enough of those 50 million "patriots" realize what their allegiance is really to, it will be too late. It seems as though democracy and life on earth are in a death spiral. #
I don't remember, did 1999.io store blog posts in OPML? #
My weblogs that I wrote using Fargo from 2014 to 2017 are still online. I run the Fargo Publisher as the web server for the site, the HTML for which stored in a S3 bucket. The Fargo Publisher is needed in order to maintain the site navigation. Fargo used Dropbox for local storage, which means that all of the OPML files that I created in Fargo are all in my Dropbox account. This morning I imported the OPML for my old Webnotes blog in to Drummer, and looking at the OPML reminds me of how Fargo was different from Drummer. For starters, each "blog post" has a type=idea, which Drummer doesn't even know what to do with. Not sure I want to do it, but I could write scripts to convert those types to oultine.#
The picture below is hosted on a Digital Ocean App Platform site that is associated to a Github repo. It dawns on me that this can be a pretty easy workflow for hosting & sharing pictures to this site and others. However, it is also constrained by the total storage available to my free Github account. (However, it's not clear to me how storage is managed/billed in Github) I remain bullish about DO's App Platform. On the gripping hand, S3 would probably be cheaper for this type of thing, but would need to find an easy way to upload files to the bucket.#
The BBC reports that Sean Connery has passed away at 90 years old. Thank you for entertaining us sir, may you rest in peace.#
Changed the header graphic to a picture of the Cut River bridge that I took during my recent trip. I find it interesting that I see more of the picture on smaller screens, like my smartphone, than on a desktop computer.#
Now that the baseball season is over I need to find another header graphic for this site.#
Congratulations to Atlanta Braves fans who are celebrating their teams World Series championship victory. Watching the game last night gave me all the feels as it was the five year anniversary of the greatest game every played. I will forever have a bit of disbelief that I lived to see the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. I know that as a fan I am supposed to want my team to win it all every year, but even though since 2016 the Cubs have ultimately lost in the playoffs those loses were not as crushing in context of 2016. The Cubs NLCS loses in 1984, 1989, and 2003 were crushing as I had never seen them in the World Series. I'll always be bitter about 1984 because frankly, they were the best National League team that year and should have played the Tigers.#
I wonder whether "tools-for-thought" ought to focus more on providing the ability to search across multiple "repositories" rather than the creation of the one-great-editor-to-rule-them-all. I personally would love a way to just search across all the places where I store information. #
Seems to me that part of Dave's "tools-for-thought" challenge is related to structured and unstructured data and maybe APIs. Roam and Logseq store data in Graph databases with each paragraph as a separate, uniquely identified block. Drummer stores data in OPML files with paragraphs in outline nodes that are unique identified. Obsidian stores data in the local computer file system as files in the markdown format. Integration seems more doable between the more structured data formats, but requires some form of translation either via an API or an understanding of a file format. #
During the workday I use a Raspberry Pi 4 with an attached SSD that I remote in to using VNC for my personal computing so that I only do work stuff on the work computer. The Pi 4 is over-clocked to 2 GHz and has four cores, so it provides good enough performance while still slower than most current computers. Today I noticed for some reason that the 220 GB SSD only had 13% space left, which I found odd because there is no way I store that much data or have that many computers. I mostly use a web browser and cleared cache, but didn't seem to recover much. I decided to reboot and I am back to more normal 86% space left. #
I am so tired of advertising bombarding everything, particularly YouTube. For me, YouTube is becoming less and less usable. Not only are there advertising cuts every three minutes but also banner ads placed over a good amount of the video display. #
Zavala is an outliner that runs in iOS and iPadOS that exports to OPML. The developer is working on integration with micro.blog using Shortcuts.#
I've been wondering whether my healthcare system will notify me about scheduling the COVID booster shot, like they did for the vaccine. So far they haven't, so I am starting to think about scheduling an appointment for myself. #
While checking out Andy's script to render a HTML page from an OPML file the thought occurred to me that pandoc might already do such thing. So I asked Google, does pandoc support OPML and got some interesting results. #
Andy has started development of a Drummer script that takes an OPML file, opened in a Drummer tab, as source and produces an HTML file. It is work in progress, but something I definitely keep my eye on as it will be useful. BTW, I do feel like this functionality should be built in to Drummer. A topic similar to this was opened in the Drummer RFC thread.#
A plugin has been developed by a third party that generates a Gatsby blog from an OPML source. Looks like Gatsby is a static site generator akin to Hugo and Jekyll. The key component is a Drummer script that makes a POST to Netlify to build the site, which is very similar to what Manton did for the integration with micro.blog. #
You can't listen if you don't want to listen.#
At best, the United States is in gridlock. Republicans don't care about governing, they just want to rule and Democrats are afraid to do anything about it for fear of retribution from Republicans. (Hence keeping the filibuster and not bringing charges against Trump.) At worst, we are seeing the final days of democracy in the United States, if not the United States itself, and the only question that remains is HOW that change will happen. It appears even a republic eventually devolves when enough money and greed is involved.#
Thermometer says it's 37 degrees outside. Per my memory today is the first day we hit 30 degrees this fall. Winter is coming.#
Good morning! We survived another Halloween, although fates were conspiring against us. A large water main break has occurred near our house. The water main is part of the regional water authority, so many communities can be affected. So far West Bloomfield township has not issued a boil water advisory. When this happened in 2017 we were boiling water for a week. I read several houses near where the break occurred have been damaged.#
The more articles I read about COVID19 the more frustrated I get with the lack of availability of affordable rapid testing in the United States. Throughout the pandemic we have suffered from the desire for certainty and perfection. Perfection is the enemy of the better. Rapid tests won't detect all cases, so they don't guarantee one is not infected, BUT if a rapid test is positive you then clearly know you are a threat to spreading the infection to others and should defintely stay home, which is more information than the average person has before they walk out the door.#
A few weeks ago I read The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral by Mike Caulfield and it really resonated with me. In my mind almost all of what I write on the web is part of my own garden, even though I do that writing using blogging tools that are more stream than garden.#
For me outlines provide a valuable structure overlay to digital gardens and they can also help redirect streams in a such a way as to flow through the gardens, for an example look at my technology outline. Here is a link to my digital garden. #
MLB Free Agent signings are picking up and so far the Cubs are sitting on the sidelines. I am starting to be pessimistic about the ownership's commitment to being competitive, there is the appearance of just collecting money from Wrigley Field tickets, betting, and all the non-baseball operations. In other words, a repeat of prior ownership that lead to 100 years of playoff futility. I really wish Mark Cuban had bought the team when he had the chance, I would not doubt his commitment to winning. #I am connecting the Macbook Air to the BenQ Monitor, which I have configured as the primary display with the display extending to the internal display of the Macbook. I expect the macOS dock should appear on the BenQ but I haven't figured out how to make it consistently appear. It seems if I move the mouse cursor to just the right spot at the bottom of the display then the dock appears and stays, but not until then. If I move the mouse to the bottom of the internal display the dock then appears there and goes away from the BenQ. Given Apple's reputation, I am surprised by this inconsistent behavior.. or perhaps this is just user error?#
Good morning. We are back to work and today is the first day that I am using the Raspberry Pi upgraded to Debian Bullseye. It might just be me, but it feels like it is running a little faster. If memory serves, I believe the graphics rendering as using a different engine so that might account for the performance difference.#
I just received the leather sleeve I ordered for my Macbook Air from Mission Leather Company and it fits perfectly. I love the smell of leather. #
- I am currently upgrading the Raspberry Pi 4 that I use as my personal desktop during the work day from the version of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian Buster to the one based on Debian Bullseye. The recommended upgrade path is a fresh install but I have this computer configured as I like and don't want to start over unless I must, so I am trying to upgrade first by following these instructions. #
- Found two problems after doing the upgrade. First, the WiFi network connection was not working, and I found a discussion thread that had the fix for me: add systemd.restore_state=0 rfkill.default_state=1 to the end of the line of /boot/cmdline.txt.#
- Next, Conky was not loading, which I fixed by uninstalling and then reinstalling.#
- Unfortunately, I am still having problems connecting to a Samba share that is hosted on Linux Mint. Whenever I try to connect to the share I see the message: "Unable to mount location Failed to retrieve share list from server. Invalid Argument."#
Today I am reminded of the awesomeness of the Internet. Two, sites worth bookmarking: screaming in Iceland and WindowSwap. You are welcome!#Without a doubt, I write more blog posts when I use Drummer than other writing tools. I think it ha to do with the fact that I can see all of the day's worth of posts on the screen rather than fragmented across pages or even within "boxes" on a page. Something psychological, I guess. Like I am working on one document, although the paragraphs are disjointed. And I agree with Dave that there is less friction between writing and publishing.#
On a whim, I opened my Fedwiki Updates page in Firefox on the Macbook Air and surprised to find that the roster now loads. Did I try loading that page in Firefox before? Maybe not because it still doesn't load in Chrome. Curious. #
A Drummer scripting question. Can I write a script to copy the current outline node to another outline file? Right now I am publishing some of what I write in Drummer to both my Old School, Daynotes site and to my main blog by coping what I write in one OPML file to the other OPML file. I think it would be handy to have a script to automate that task for me.#
An observation. The 2020 edition Macbook Air is one substantial piece of metal. Not only does it handle compute processing like butter, but it can probably stop a bullet and do serious damage if I used it to hit someone at the right spot. I don't think any computing device I've ever owned has felt this metallic. #
I've been monitoring the COVID data pretty much since it has been published, but I am embarrassed to admit that I just now found the COVID ActNow site, which does the best job of presenting and explaining the data of all the other sites I've seen. Unfortunately, the data for Michigan looks awful. The only good news for myself is that the county in which I live has a lower vulnerability rating because of having a higher vaccination rate.#
I've written before and I will say it again, the favorite feature of my micro.blog site is the On This Day page. I really want to write a script that pulls the blog posts that I have written on a given day from all of my blog sites. I know that I could try to import my old blog posts in to the micro.blog site, but it feels like those posts should remain in the domain they where written in, though it does mean I have writing strewn all over the Internet. Sorry. #
I received an email offerring a Black Friday discount on a upgrade for Parallels that I went ahead and purchased because I was planning to buy it anyway. As a result I am currently building a VM running Windows 11 for ARM. I have a similar build on an SSD connected to a Raspberry Pi 4, and now I am contemplating whether to keep that build or reuse the SSD for something else. #
Thermometer says that it is 24 degrees outside. Do I break down and put on the snow pants for my morning walk or just a thicker pair of sweats? Update: I put on thicker sweats. #
- We have an Airthings Wave Mini, which is an air quality monitor, in the basement where we work. The key pieces of information it provides are the amount of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the air and the risk for mold growth. It sounds like knowing the amount of VOCs is a good thing, but the problem we are having is relating what Airthings says it measures as VOCs to what we have in the basement. In short, none of the items they list as producing VOCs are present in our basement and yet we see the graph go up and down. #
- The obvious correlation seems to be the furnace and air conditioning, and yet the Airthings site makes no mention of these items in their documentation. Another correlation seems to be when we are actually in the basement because that means there are usually computers or televisions running, not to mention our own breathing. What I've found disappointing is that Airthings does not provide any information about how to interpret the data collected by the Wave Mini to make decisions. They provide a dashboard of graphs showing the data over time, which makes sense, but should I be more concerned about spikes or averages over time? The use of graphs suggest I should be most concerned about averages, but averages can be skewed. If the numbers go down while we are not in the basement but go up when we are in the basement, is that a problem? #
- So, what to do about this? We are talking about a basement, so it's not like I can open a window. I am thinking that if there is a problem the best we can do is a get an air filter, which then begs the question, which one(s) to get given the space? #
I think I am going to use Firefox for a while on the Macbook Air. Given that macOS shortcuts are new to me, using a different browser shouldn't be too traumatic. #
Wondering what is the best browser to use on my new Macbook Air? My normal primary browser is Chrome and that serves me well except for one small issue with selecting text in Drummer and Little Outliner. In Chrome I can't select text with the mouse in these apps after a period of time. Does the same problem exist with Firefox? I am going to check, as I have installed Firefox.#
I am growing more and more frustrated with the finger print scanner on my Google Pixel 4a. It just doesn't reliably recognize my finger print, and I never had that problem with the prior Pixel 2. I do need to remember to clean the scanner more frequently, but again that is not something I had to worry about with the prior phone. #
As far as I can tell, Dave thinks people will mostly use markdown in titled posts. #
Testing a couple of new things in Drummer today. Below you see the use of markdown to render a quote. I am struggling to determine the best way handle quote attribution. Decided on a lead in to the quote and a simple source anchor link. #
As noted yesterday, both test positivity rate and new cases are rising in Michigan, indicating increased community spread. New cases are highest among young people, and while they are not as high risk for death, they present a risk of spreading the disease to people who are at risk.#
Detroit's William Beaumont Hospital:#
"What we’ve seen is that generally around 65-70% of all of our COVID patients in the hospital at any given time are unvaccinated,” Gilpin said. “That holds true for any COVID patient who comes into the hospital. That number is also approximately the same for our ICU patients." source#
- I like the idea of markdown node types in Drummer to add more control over telling Old School how to render text. At a node level it probably makes more sense to use markdown for formatting that applies to the entire node. Great for quotes and code blocks, for example. Typeface formatting like bold and italics can be done in Drummer via standard control keys. #
- When using Drummer to write stories (essays, pages, etc...) I would like to be able to add an OPML head that would tell pagePark that the entire OPML source file has markdown formatting. We could start with just using markdown inline to indicate heads, lists, etc.. but would love it if at some point pagePark would simply treat parent nodes as H2s rather than the collapsable heads it renders today. #
- Today pagePark renders an OPML source to what I call a HTML outline format, for example see this page, which I like for some cases but not all. In other cases I want the document that I write in Drummer to render to a standard, flat HTML page in which parent nodes are simply treated as H2s. I think support of a markdown rendering directive in the OPML head would be a great way to accomplish this. #
- While I am thinking about it, I'll note here that what I really want is for Drummer to support the Story format that was in Fargo. A story format renders an OPML file into a single HTML page, in a manner much like what you see when you click the head link above except that I could define a different page header graphic and the title for the page would replace the blog title. #
I've been away from Drummer for several days, so I am just catching up on the change notes. I see that Dave made a change that removes the requirement of a type attribute to publish nodes via Old School. #
My wife and I got our COVID-19 booster shot yesterday, and it appears that Michigan has had the second highest number of new cases in the United States over the last seven days. My healthcare network says Michigan is in it's fourth COVID wave. The vaccine and booster are good news, as is the fact that Pfizer has a antiviral pill that appears effective in treating COVID. As the timeline moves along doctors and scientists learn more about preventing and treating this disease, but is only effective if we listen.#
I am starting use my Macbook Air M1 more and I have to say that for a long time Windows user, MacOS feels like an entirely different world. Having experienced similar feelings with my iPads, I continue to be surprised that Apple doesn't provide better starting/transition points for new users.#
I like my Google Pixel 4a but I do find the finger print scanner frustrating because it doesn't consistently recognize my finger. It seems that if I don't place my finger just "so" the scan doesn't work and just won't until it has time to reset. #
I see some folks having issue with the need to assign a type to a node in order for it to be published via the Old School publisher. I get the desire to just start writing and hitting ENTER to start a new paragraph. My thought is that it should be pretty easy to write a script that would assign type = outline to each node subsequent node. In the meantime, I'll just mention that one can always manual add the outline type to nodes via the briefcase in the toolbar, or click the plus button and move the nodes around after, which is a benefit of writing in an outliner.#
Tested the changes to Drummer that Dave released today, both in Drummer and in Electric Drummer. I am looking forward to seeing what is possible for the integration of Github to Drummer. #
Searched for information about connecting the Macbook Air M1 to the Anker PowerExpander USB-C Dock and found a Reddit thread with a link to the DisplayLink Manager for MacOS that I downloaded and installed. An icon is added to the Launchpad and there is a status bar icon. I am now able to connect the Macbook to the dock and the monitor is recognized and display appears. Looks to be 4K at 60 Hz, ran the YouTube 4K HDR video and it looks nice. Curious though that the status icon shows no monitor connected.#
I installed the Evernote application on the Macbook Air and it has been a while since I've spent any amount of time in the full desktop version of the app. The desktop application has come a long way since I was using it heavily in Windows, and may be useful enough to start using more. #
Full screen or windowed? I might need to make up my mind. #
An interesting aspect to my getting set up on this Macbook is that I am more an iPadOS user, which means in some ways I am migrating from iPad to the Mac. My mindset is, which of the apps I run on the iPad have a Mac counterpart? For example, Spark is my preferred email app for not only iPad but Android too so I searched for and found it in the Mac app store. #
I went in to the terminal on the Macbook and typed git --version and saw a dialog saying it needed to download and install Command Line Developer tools, which I told it to do. #
Still think the coolest experience I have with Apple products is now the Airpods just work between devices. All I did was flip open the case in the presence of the Macbook, popped in and started playing some music and they connected and worked. Why can't Apple do the same thing with the Pencil 2? #
Now that I am back to using a Mac I realize there is a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts that I need to retrain my brain to use.#
I have a new laptop computer, a Macboook Air, that I bought at an actual computer store. It has been a long time, since well before the pandemic, that I have been in an actual computer store. In fact, it was probably this same store, a Microcenter. Fifteen years ago one could find several stores like CompUSA and Fry's in metropolitan areas, but they are now all pretty much gone, succumbed to big box consumer electronics stores like Best Buy or to online sites like Amazon. I didn't realize how much I missed wandering through these stores until today. Unlike like the sterile big box stores, there is a definite geek vibe to a true computer store. While I didn't set out to do it, I am happy that I bought this computer in that store.#
If you use the outline rendering feature of Drummer and you want to have nodes render as collapsed as I do on my technology page, add an attribute called collapse to the parent node and set its value to true. I wish there was a simple way to expand and collapse all heads on a page, I propose clicking the page title as an option, or perhaps include a button like the XML icon that displays as the top right of the page.#
The PagePark rendering of OPML that Dave wrote about here is how I have been rendering my now page as well as my technology page. I think of these as single page web apps because they include the scripting to expand and collapse headlines. I tested Dave's new instance of the PagePark OPML rendering he set up for Drummer using the outline I created last year of all the books that I read in 2020. Now, while I link how PagePark renders OPML into an outline format in HTML, there will be times that I want parent nodes to be treated as standard HTML heads rather than as an outline node. So, in my opinion PagePark does get all the way to producing standalone web pages. It seems to me that this could be handled by a OPML header, say something like "htmlFormat" that took as values outline and standard.#
As I stated earlier, I am in the market for a new Macbook Air with 512 GB of storage. I read this morning about a $200 discount on these devices at Amazon, and I in fact found the model I wanted for $1,049 but I didn't really want to buy from Amazon because the debit card I want to use to pay for it is not associated to that account. I checked BestBuy.com, but they never had the 512 GB model for sale at that price, in fact they removed it from their listing on the site until Amazon was out of stock. I have to decide how I want to buy this because I don't think I want to be playing these flash sale games. #
A new version of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian Bullseye has been released. Unfortunately there is no real upgrade path so if I want to "upgrade" my Pi desktop I will need to rebuild on to new storage, which is not the most appealing endeavor. #
Kevin Tofel is tinkering with something that I want, which is the ability to query all of my personal repositories for information that I have stored. Kevin's solution is basically creating an operational data store and importing your information in to it, in his case via JSON. In my mind all the whole export/import approach could get hard to manage. I much rather be able to do API calls to the systems that have my information and get results back. So, if I want to query my repositories for what I've stored about COVID-19, it would make API calls to Evernote and Roam and get results back. The point is, the gist of what Kevin is doing is what I want rather than what Dave wants.#
- Pfizer has been working on a pill to treat COVID-19, they said results look promising but they haven't been fully vetted. Currently, remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, is the only antiviral approved by FDA for treatment of Covid-19. It's given by intravenous infusion, so it's not as simple to administer as a pill. #
- People can also be treated with monoclonal antibodies, which are injected or infused therapies that kickstart the immune system to help fight off infection. They are not as easy to take as a pill and must be administered by a trained professional.#
- Merck is seeking FDA emergency use authorization for molnupiravir, an antiviral capsule people could take at home. It's been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by about 50%. On Thursday, UK drug regulators authorized molnupiravir under the brand name Lagevrio.#
I am in the market for a Macbook. While I like and advocate Chromebooks, I recognize that all the cool software that I want to play with is only available for Mac. #
To use Drummer fully as a writing tool, I need to be able to create stories, which I think are standalone HTML pages that are not embedded in the blog. I would link to a story using a link type, such as I do below, or even write an intro blog post to link to the story. In the context of Dave's prior work, there is prior art: Fargo had support for a story publishing format, that was basically a blog based on post titles rather than on the Old School date format. Back then stories could even have their own header graphic, here is one of my favorite examples of a story that I wrote using Fargo and published with the Fargo Publisher.#
I don't see a way out, 50 million people are not going to change their minds any time soon. Democrats are too afraid to fight, so the DOJ will not do anything meaningful. When Democrats start putting Republicans in prison, then Republicans will start putting Democrats in prison because there is no more rule of law and everything is considered political. We will have to adapt and endure. Probably need to start to take a serious look at how normal people live in Russia and Hungary as that is the clear template for the Republicans. Still, I am shocked to find myself witnessing the end of democracy in the United States during my lifetime. By the time enough of those 50 million "patriots" realize what their allegiance is really to, it will be too late. It seems as though democracy and life on earth are in a death spiral. #
I don't remember, did 1999.io store blog posts in OPML? #
My weblogs that I wrote using Fargo from 2014 to 2017 are still online. I run the Fargo Publisher as the web server for the site, the HTML for which stored in a S3 bucket. The Fargo Publisher is needed in order to maintain the site navigation. Fargo used Dropbox for local storage, which means that all of the OPML files that I created in Fargo are all in my Dropbox account. This morning I imported the OPML for my old Webnotes blog in to Drummer, and looking at the OPML reminds me of how Fargo was different from Drummer. For starters, each "blog post" has a type=idea, which Drummer doesn't even know what to do with. Not sure I want to do it, but I could write scripts to convert those types to oultine.#
The picture below is hosted on a Digital Ocean App Platform site that is associated to a Github repo. It dawns on me that this can be a pretty easy workflow for hosting & sharing pictures to this site and others. However, it is also constrained by the total storage available to my free Github account. (However, it's not clear to me how storage is managed/billed in Github) I remain bullish about DO's App Platform. On the gripping hand, S3 would probably be cheaper for this type of thing, but would need to find an easy way to upload files to the bucket.#
The BBC reports that Sean Connery has passed away at 90 years old. Thank you for entertaining us sir, may you rest in peace.#
Changed the header graphic to a picture of the Cut River bridge that I took during my recent trip. I find it interesting that I see more of the picture on smaller screens, like my smartphone, than on a desktop computer.#
Now that the baseball season is over I need to find another header graphic for this site.#
Congratulations to Atlanta Braves fans who are celebrating their teams World Series championship victory. Watching the game last night gave me all the feels as it was the five year anniversary of the greatest game every played. I will forever have a bit of disbelief that I lived to see the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. I know that as a fan I am supposed to want my team to win it all every year, but even though since 2016 the Cubs have ultimately lost in the playoffs those loses were not as crushing in context of 2016. The Cubs NLCS loses in 1984, 1989, and 2003 were crushing as I had never seen them in the World Series. I'll always be bitter about 1984 because frankly, they were the best National League team that year and should have played the Tigers.#
I wonder whether "tools-for-thought" ought to focus more on providing the ability to search across multiple "repositories" rather than the creation of the one-great-editor-to-rule-them-all. I personally would love a way to just search across all the places where I store information. #
Seems to me that part of Dave's "tools-for-thought" challenge is related to structured and unstructured data and maybe APIs. Roam and Logseq store data in Graph databases with each paragraph as a separate, uniquely identified block. Drummer stores data in OPML files with paragraphs in outline nodes that are unique identified. Obsidian stores data in the local computer file system as files in the markdown format. Integration seems more doable between the more structured data formats, but requires some form of translation either via an API or an understanding of a file format. #
During the workday I use a Raspberry Pi 4 with an attached SSD that I remote in to using VNC for my personal computing so that I only do work stuff on the work computer. The Pi 4 is over-clocked to 2 GHz and has four cores, so it provides good enough performance while still slower than most current computers. Today I noticed for some reason that the 220 GB SSD only had 13% space left, which I found odd because there is no way I store that much data or have that many computers. I mostly use a web browser and cleared cache, but didn't seem to recover much. I decided to reboot and I am back to more normal 86% space left. #
I am so tired of advertising bombarding everything, particularly YouTube. For me, YouTube is becoming less and less usable. Not only are there advertising cuts every three minutes but also banner ads placed over a good amount of the video display. #
Zavala is an outliner that runs in iOS and iPadOS that exports to OPML. The developer is working on integration with micro.blog using Shortcuts.#
I've been wondering whether my healthcare system will notify me about scheduling the COVID booster shot, like they did for the vaccine. So far they haven't, so I am starting to think about scheduling an appointment for myself. #
While checking out Andy's script to render a HTML page from an OPML file the thought occurred to me that pandoc might already do such thing. So I asked Google, does pandoc support OPML and got some interesting results. #
Andy has started development of a Drummer script that takes an OPML file, opened in a Drummer tab, as source and produces an HTML file. It is work in progress, but something I definitely keep my eye on as it will be useful. BTW, I do feel like this functionality should be built in to Drummer. A topic similar to this was opened in the Drummer RFC thread.#
A plugin has been developed by a third party that generates a Gatsby blog from an OPML source. Looks like Gatsby is a static site generator akin to Hugo and Jekyll. The key component is a Drummer script that makes a POST to Netlify to build the site, which is very similar to what Manton did for the integration with micro.blog. #
You can't listen if you don't want to listen.#
At best, the United States is in gridlock. Republicans don't care about governing, they just want to rule and Democrats are afraid to do anything about it for fear of retribution from Republicans. (Hence keeping the filibuster and not bringing charges against Trump.) At worst, we are seeing the final days of democracy in the United States, if not the United States itself, and the only question that remains is HOW that change will happen. It appears even a republic eventually devolves when enough money and greed is involved.#
Thermometer says it's 37 degrees outside. Per my memory today is the first day we hit 30 degrees this fall. Winter is coming.#
Good morning! We survived another Halloween, although fates were conspiring against us. A large water main break has occurred near our house. The water main is part of the regional water authority, so many communities can be affected. So far West Bloomfield township has not issued a boil water advisory. When this happened in 2017 we were boiling water for a week. I read several houses near where the break occurred have been damaged.#