Author: carpetbomberz

  • Dave Winer’s survey of ActivityPub

    I think this is working. I don’t use WordPress as a means of originating longer form posts on ActivityPub. But I am certain I do have this hooked up correctly as it cross-posts to ActivityPub in past and likely will do it now. But I’ve never tried writing a block of text sufficiently long to override the limits of the Mastodon host where my mastodon account lives. Time now to go for a drive, shall we?!

    Okay as I recall I bump into the 500 char. limit but not very often. So if doing a cross-post from WP to Mastodon.online allows me the freedom to write EVEryThInG completely without concision or self-editing, I’m all for that. And maybe a featured image or two. Turns out Dave only got 4 responses to his Google Survey, but I wasn’t sure if he meant cross-posting where you have money to pay for the ACTUAL Activity Pub plug-in or the base level connection you get with the **free** WP.com account. ‘Cuz that’s what I’ve got. Free as in beer, but I have to allow WP to insert adverts into my postings. And they very well may do that here if I type long enough. But that’s worthy of testing and again, I’m all about measuring things and road-testing them too.

    If it is the case I can override the char. limit by using WordPress.com to cross-post without the Pay For ActivityPub plug-in you can bet I will post a lot more from this here WP.com account that’s for sure. Now I notice that WP.com allows me to pre-view this post in various sundry pre-viewers like a.)Desktop b.)Tablet and c.)Mobile. But now there’s also Email? and Fediverse too? But when I try Fediverse preview it gives me this sad uninformative error:

    And I “feel like” this may be due to the fact I’m on the free WP.com plan and am not using the pay-for ActivityPub plug-in. And I think NOW, my word count is well over the limit of my chosen Mastodon host. (1000+ chars.)

  • The big Press Conference – June 1990 (Jet Propulsion Lab)

    So if you click on the video embedded in this little story, you’ll see there’s a section much later in the program at approximately: 57:22, where Carl Sagan commands “Slide!”

    And that my friends is the Neil Armstrong moment. Carl gets to show the first attempt at collecting a “family portrait” of all the planets in the Solar System,but most particularly at that distance Voyager 1 was at, looking backward toward the Sun (not an easy shot to get). But more to the point at the end after he ruminates about the Pale Blue Dot photograph, Carl has some details, and thanks to give out.

    See Carl fought a good fight for almost 10 years to get a photo of the Earth from either of the Voyager probes. And none of the scientists/staff managining either mission, NOR Nasa itself wanted to waste valuable time on something so superficial or frivolous or self-centered as an image of Earth from out on the edges of the Solar System. And every time that Carl got shot down, he would try, try again. Until the scientists/staffers finally ran out of actual “Science” they could do on Voyager 1. So they put it through the process of making it an official observation, got it on the schedule.

    But man, they hat cut it close. They were right on the hairy edge of missing out, being to far away, in the wrong position to get a usuable image. But they got went throught processes, all the official channels. And Carl thanks each of the 3 JPL staffers who went to bat, and supported the celestial family portrait images, including then head of NASA, Richard Truly. It took NASA and JPL staffers to get that celestial family portrait done. But more to the point, the thing Sagan and his wife Ann really wanted,… that portrait of the Earth way out in the darkness of the Universe.

    So enjoy the press conference. It was a celebration for its time. And Voyager 1 still keeps going and going and going.

  • Character Limit with Kate Conger and Ryan Mac

    Bryan and Adam have been gushing for months over Character Limit, the fantastic book by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about Elon Musk’s haphazard and disastrous takeover of Twitter. They’re joined by the authors themselves to discuss the book, Musk, DOGE, and some of the Character Limit unreleased B-sides.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam…

    Character Limit with Kate Conger and Ryan Mac

    If your a fan of 0xide and Friends checkout the podcast. Interesting insights and trial run of sociopathic behavioral choices pre-DOG3.

  • Let’s budget to leave the US with me .

    Skip the propaganda scheduled for 2nite. Turn off yr. TeeVee and join Anomalily on YouTube LIVE.

    Let’s budget to leave the US with me .
  • Anomalily on YouTube has a channel

    Talking Dough and Eating Doughnuts. It’s 1 part personal savings/finance, 1 part fun with your daily planner and always a review of locally made vegan doughnut (or sometimes 2 doughnuts!)

    Well worth the time spent. And I am always, always in the chat with all the other folks. 4:39 Pacific, 7:39 Eastern Standard Time. You won’t be disappointed.

  • Gulf of Mexico

    It’s pronounced “Gulf of Mexico”

    Gulf of Mexico
    Gulf of Mexico

    Your favorite free map provider may lie to you. Your GPS even may lie. But I will not lie. I’m not paid to lie, or lying to suck up to Daddy, to avoid government interference or worse “regulation”. No here it is, the truth, both plain and simple.

    It is what it is, what it has been, and always will be. The Gulf of Mexico.

  • #TIL Banana-Melt

    Who sez’ Spotify’s recommendation engine is no good. This band is described as Try to imagine an even more energetic incarnation of the Boredoms.

    And that’s good enough for me.

    Hellz Yeah! gimme summa dat dere Spotify Recommendation Engine, yo!

  • Matt Mullenweg is EVIL incarnate

    bullenweg

    Bullenweg.com is no longer available following threats of legal action from Matthew Mullenweg.

    Platforming the claims in the lawsuits, in particular, is shaky ground. I encourage you to read this article:

    https://www.vulture.com/article/piers-morgan-apologizes-jay-z-beyonce-uncensored-jaguar-wright.html

    It is important to me to know who is behind Bullenweg, and I believe the legal system provides ample opportunities to do so. That will take a few weeks, or if you reveal yourself now we can discuss next steps.

  • The Human Element

    https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2024/09/20/Digital-Layers-and-Human-Ties-Navigating-the-CIOs-Dilemma-in-Higher-Education.aspx

    Nice little summation of the role tech plays in removing the “need” for intervention/assistance from a person in the loop. Ideally everything is DIY, freeing you to spend less of your valuable time waiting to perform a key activity, chore if you will, for work or daily life. The more those automations occur, the more we are disengaged from our human experience. We’re just stimuli and actors, not so much something with agency, self-actualization, and of course empathy.

    One of the things I immediately recognized was the mention of Jon Kabat-Zinn (he of Cognitive Based Therapy of pain management) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn. But they re-use the idea of being “present” and emphasizing that slowly eroding human connection, and connected-ness to real life experience. Glad to see such a humanistic essay in Campus Technology website.