John's World Wide Wall Display: Recent Episodes
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Original 934 KBReduced: 360KBI thought it might be worth noting this use of claide.ai. I’ve seen a wide variety of views on AI and its promise & pitfalls. When it comes to writing a wee bit of code I feel a lot of sympathy with Alan’s approach. But I have dabbled a bit and do so again this week.
I use gifsicle a bit for creating and editing gifs, it is a really powerful tool. I think I’ve a reasonable but limited understanding of how to use it. In the past I’ve used it for removing every second frame of the gif and adjusting the delay.
#!/bin/bash gifsicle -U -d 28 --colors 64 "$1"seq -f "#%g" 0 2 20-O3 -o "$2"
This is pretty crude and you need to manually edit the number of frames and guesstimate the new delay which will be applied to every frame1.
I know gifsicle can list the delays of each frame with the –info switch, but I do not know enough enough bash to use that information to create a new gif. I had a good idea of the pseudo code needed but I reckoned that the time it would take to read the man page and google my way to the bash syntax needed was too much for me.
This week I was trying to reduce a gif I’d made from a screen recording. It turned out a bit bigger than I had hoped. I tried a couple of application but didn’t make much of a dent. I decided to ask Claude:
I am using gifsicle/ I want to input a gif, and create a new one. Explode the gif, delete ever second frame and put an animated gif back together doubling the delay for each frame. So a gif with 20 frames will end up with 10 frames but take the same length of time. I’d like to deal with gifs that have different delays on different frames. So for example frame 1 and 2 the delays for these frames added together and applied to frame one of the new gif.
The original query had a few typos and spelling mistakes but Claude didn’t mind. After one wrong move, when Claude expected the gifsicle file name to be slightly different I got a working script and took my 957KB gif down to 352KB, that was the image at the top of the pos2t.
I had asked for the script to use gifsicle explode facility to export all of the frames. Which the script did, neatly in a temporary folder. As I typed up this post, looking at my original attempt, I realised I should not have asked for the script to explode the gif, but just grab every second frame from the original. This seemed more logical and perhaps economical, so I asked Claude to take that approach. The final script has been quickly tested and uploaded a gist: gif frame reduction in case anyone would find this useful.
Of course this has added to the pile of not quite formed reflections on AI and should we have anything to do with it. I don’t feel too guilty as I needed at least a little gifsicle knowhow to get started.
Original Gif 311KBReduced, every second frame gif 225KB1. The seq command just outputs a sequence of numbers from 0 to 20, counting up in steps of 2. The -f “#%g” makes it print a # before each number, which makes gifsicle understand it as a frame selection instead of a file name. The backticks around the seq command cause its output to be included as parameters in the gifsicle command line. I am sure I googled to work that out ↩︎ 2. There is a difference between the sizes reported by the Finder & WordPress. The wordPress ones are on the image caption. ↩︎
As I approach my retirement from class teaching, I thought it might be worth making some notes about how I use Glow Blogs1 in that role2. I’ve been using blogs in class since 2024. A lot of what follows is obvious stuff but there may be a nugget or two.
Class BlogMy current class site is the Banton Biggies – The Tallest Class in Banton Primary
This is principally a way of keeping a record of some of the more interesting things we have been doing. Informing parents and any one else interested.
When I started running a class blog, back in 2004, I had pupils doing most of the posting. A rota of pupils who posted about the previous day’s learning. I now focus on my pupils posting to their e-portfolios and some project work. I do all of the posting, I do give some ‘pupil voice’ lift quotes from the classes e-portfolios and exit tickets.
Surprisingly I now find it harder to organise rotas and give individuals time for posting than I did before CfE.
I post a lot more video now than I used to. Most via YouTube. These are often just concatenated photos that I take or short videos the pupils have created or a combination of both. I don’t spend much time editing these, using Snapthread or iMovie, Magic Movie.
I use the WordPress block editor for most things. I try to use featured images, limited number of photos in galleries with some single images. I use the quote block quite often to add text from the pupils.
I use the Embed Plus for YouTube plugin to post YouTube videos. This allows me to avoid suggested videos at the end of play. I needed to get a YouTube API key, which was a bit of a faff, but only had to be done once. The videos are unlisted in YouTube as recommended by North Lanarkshire council.
I seldom use any other blocks. I use slash, /, and start typing the name of the block to insert blocks quickly.
I find the class blog very useful for gathering information about some activity or concept that class have been involved in. I can use separate pages to gather posts on a particular topic or project. for example, I’ve posted a lot about our MakerSpace so have a page for that. There I used the Query Loop Block to gather the relevant posts and the Embed Plus to show a YouTube playlist.
Tags and categories allow me to quickly pull together evidence if asked for. Search lets me aid my failing memory to repeat lessons from a few years back or remember ideas to share.
I know that blogs are a bit more difficult to post to that X/Twitter. Twitter became the go to way to share classroom activity (maybe not so much now). I’ve found time & again that blogs are more powerful and useful. I can’t imagine teaching without one.
HomeworkI post homework grids to my class blog as well as providing them physically.
e-PortfoliosMy class make use of individual e-Portfolios for keeping a record of some of their learning. At one point the council encouraged schools to use them with all upper primary pupils to produce profiles. I use them to track targets and record learning in a slightly less formal way. Since I teach multi-composites some of my primary sevens have had quite impressive sites.
Hopefully some experience of using the most popular app to create website, WordPress will do some good too.
Project sitesBanton Beasties
This lists and classifies the creatures we have seen in the playground or our outdoor learning trips to the woods. It has been running for just over a year and I just made it public. The site is organised around the classification of animals. So we are learning about that, lifecycles and some WordPress skills.
This site is being made by the children in the Banton Biggies class of Banton Primary. They are using it to practise their research and writing skills. The information is gleaned from the internet and we try to acknowledge sources appropriately. We may make mistakes and will try and correct them over time. Always a work in progress.
PodcastMy class occasionally creates an episode for the BBP, this has turned out to be about two episodes a year. In my previous school we tried for a podcast once a month, but that was a lunchtime club. Currently my whole class is involved. We use it as an opportunity to explore, writing, collaboration and talking (more).
I’ve posted a lot about podcasting here, for example: More Classroom Podcasting & More Podcasting in the Classroom thoughts
Learning resourcesI keep a site as a resource site for my class: Banton Buzz – Challenges, Links and Tasks for the Banton biggies. At first I tried to organise it. Now I mostly give the class links to posts and projects on the site. This means a lot of the content is not easily discoverable. I use H5P a lot (hundreds) on the site to create quizzes and activities. The vast majority of the content here goes along with the NLC spelling program for second level. But I’ve experimented with a lot of other H5P content types, e-portfolio starters, video embeds and experiments.
Exit TicketsI’ve got blog of this name where I post short exit ticket style questions and pupils post comments. I use this as an occasional alternative to post-its and other plenary tools. I am not sure that I recommend it for anyone else, but as I am pretty familiar with the system I can quickly post a question on the fly and pop up a QR code onto our Apple TV or airdrop a link.
Scratching the SurfaceIt was over 20 years ago when I started using Blogs in my primary classes. I feel I’ve just scratched the surface of what is possible. It is one thing I would certainly recommend to my fellow teachers as being worth the extra workload.
- Glow Blogs are WordPress blogs provided to Scottish Educators by the government via Glow. Glow is Scotland’s national digital learning platform provided by Scottish Government and managed by Education Scotland. ↩︎
- Slight caveat, I work part-time as Product Owner for Glow blogs, so have a bias. I did start blogging in class before Glow and before Glow adopted WordPress Blogs. ↩︎
Usually at this time of year I am busy ‘tidying’ things into cupboards. The summer holidays are approaching. This year I am having to clean the out – nine years of accumulated stuff.
There are worksheets galore, laminated instructions and guides, old Tate gallery calendars. Books, tapes, things I’ve made to help with a task, things I thought might be useful, kids work I couldn’t throw out, old bits of technology, a tower of dvd disks I was keeping for bird scarers.
The electric trunking round my room has a collection of interesting wee things the kids have found, spider skeletons, squirrel and mouse gnawed nuts, broken egg shells feather and the like.
As someone who doesn’t have a great memory, this brings back lots. It has also makes me think of a few slightly connected things.
Reinventing the wheelPrimary teachers create a lot of resources. Or buy them from twinkl or similar. I thought that the flowering of edutech might have delivered shared resources in a more distributed, open way than it has. I do resent the money spent, as I think with some leadership we could have had something great.
I am organising, as best I can, anything I think might be useful and leaving them for the next person to occupy my classroom. But I also found resources left by the previous incumbent that I’ve never touched.
memoriesSome of the memories I’ve got are stored in our class blog. As they get older I doubt there of much interest or anyone other than me. I will be a wee bit sad as they are lost or replace in the future.
I met this snail this morning. I am wondering why its trail is ‘dotted’? Was it hopping;-)
It looked like it was going to rain this afternoon, so we had a quick walk up to Jaw Reservoir. Plenty of small heath butterflies about. Lots of foxgloves and plenty of bird song. A whinchat in a dead larch near the water.
RIP Bill Atkinson March 17, 1951 – June 5, 2025
Among many other things, the invention of HyperCard. Certainly the most important piece of software in my life.
Likes ‘No smartphones before 14; no social media until 16’: The Anxious Generation author on how to fight back against big tech.
Give them a flip phone, a brick phone, a dumb phone. The key is you want your kids to be able to communicate with their friends, but you don’t want to give them over to for-profit companies [whose] goal is to hook your child.
My emphasis, I’ve no real idea if keeping kids away from smartphones is possible, but I do wonder if alternatives to for-profit companies could be created?
I wonder too if it might be even more important to keep parents of pre schoolers away from their smartphones?
Likes I Do Not Remember My Life and It’s Fine by Marco Giancotti.
Intriguing
via Steven Splinter
This is a fascinating read! I had a shallow understanding of what aphantasia is before reading this account of trying to remember without access to mental imagery.
Where the comments are interesting too.
I feel I’ve more than a touch of this, I don’t really visualise, have a less than perfect memory, and my facial recognition is poor. I am quite good with knowing where I am and navigation.
My blog is 20 years old. In those 20 years I’ve changed urls, software & the focus has wandered. My first post was on this date 2005. According to the dashboard I’ve made 4,383 Posts. My most common tags are classroom, blogging, WordPress, walk, fauna & flora.
Recently I saw a post on Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel pointing to a nice 3 column layout for a blog.
Doug wondered :
If you’re reading this and know of a similar blog theme, on any platform, could you let me know?
I thought it would be possible to use the Site Editor on a WordPress block theme and left a comment.
I’ve been watching quite a few WordPress videos from Jamie WP. I especially like his Remaking Famous Websites playlist. So I thought it might be possible to make a WordPress site that looked a bit like garry.net.
Jamie does these in 30 minutes. This took me longer, but I’ve not a whole lot of experience with the site editor. I decided to use Glow Blogs. It is free and easy for me to set up a site there. I serve as part time product owner so this is good practise. The disadvantage is that I can’t install any extra plug-ins or add any custom css1. Glow Blogs also runs a version or so behind WordPress.org.
I only did enough to see where I could go easily. I didn’t attempt to match styles or other features.
I got as far as Three Columns, this is not finished or polised but I managed:
-
- a home page with some static content and a left hand navigation.
- a posts page with the same left hand column. A second column listing the posts and loading the latest post in the third column.
- finally a single post page with the same first two columns. The post tapped or clicked in the second column showing in the third.
To do this I created three page templates2. All are inside columns. All have the same first column. So I made that one as a pattern3. The second column is used twice, so I made another pattern for that. This stopped me having to fix the same thing in different places. I think this is the right approach.
I’ve ignored mobile and other possible pages. I didn’t touch archive, views for categories and tags for example . My aim was to spend a couple of hours on this.
I had trouble with a few things.
- I had edited the Front Page Template, which should be used for the posts page. This didn’t show up. When I edit the posts page and then edit the template I see my 3 column. Unfortunately the live page still uses the old template. So given my time limit I just made another page to act as the posts page and made an ‘All posts’ template for that. This has a query loop in the second column, acting as an index for the posts.
- The second column on the Posts & single post page should ideally scroll all of the posts. Probably inside a fixed height block with lazy load.
- I think I should have used Template parts when I used patterns. but the result seems the same.
- I am not sure how to hilight the posts selected in the second column. garry.net does this nicely.
- I enjoyed poking around in the site editor. I can see the potential for creating different types of site. I am not convinced that access to the Site Editor alone would make much differences to busy teachers with a lot on their plate. Most Glow Blogs stick with the default theme. I am beginning to see how patterns and templates could make things easier for folk.
- WordPress multi-sites do not automatically support custom css. The Jetpack plugin used to do this but not anymore. I hope it will be added back in. ↩︎
- Well I did that finally, I made lots of mistakes first. ↩︎
- Again I did that a more than a few times. I think this should have been a template part rather than a pattern. ↩︎
Things that cheered me up today.
bradenslen pointed me to this:
England, like most countries, is more of an imagined place than anything objectively real. Its ordinanced borders are merely state stories. We who live here know its true thresholds are the salted shore, ends of lanes where magic lives. We all make it up as walk its ways. – #CLNolan
[image or embed]
— hookland.bsky.social (@hookland.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 5:02 PM
It’s a win for butterflies! Government refuses emergency use of banned butterfly-killing pesticide on sugar beet | Butterfly Conservation
But Environment Minister Emma Hardy decided not to grant the authorisation for emergency use of Cruiser SB, which contains the butterfly-killing neonicotinoid thiamethoxam prohibited since 2018 – the first time in five years the application has been turned down.
Post by @climagic@mastodon.social View on Mastodon
A test from PootleWriter. A new simple markdown editor for WordPress. Looks like everything is on Local Storage. Should be interesting to Dave Winer. Some similarities to WordLand, some differences.
Update, more info Introducing PootleWriter: Your Friction-Free WordPress Writing Companion – Pootlepress
In reply to 💬 Tools I’m Using to Build My Digital Garden by Aaron Davis.
I guess in not paying for the various efficiencies gained with Sync or Readwise then it is costing me my time? Food for thought I guess.
Or maybe you save a bit of time by not exploring all the services you would have to pay for?
I love the idea of a Sunday drive blog. Perhaps the correct pace for a blog to be. Relaxed, without particular direction and enjoyable. I’ve got the idea of ‘a Sunday stroll’ as a description of where I want my blog to go. See also Flâneur.
Read Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆ 📚
Took a while for the strands to come together, each character drawn with detail. Once I was engaged the end came too quick. Slightly confused as I came in at 4th in the series, although I’d watch the tv one long ago.
Greenside Reservoir Late Afternoon (quarter past 3). Saw quite a few fieldfares on the way up the path.
I’d noticed that my ?random link here stopped working a while ago. A search found it had been removed from Jetpack and WordPress.com had brought it back. I asked ChatGPT for a snippet that would bring this back and it works.
The Kids found a Red Admiral in the playground today. First bit of sun for a while, but November!
I took a rather dull photos of some starlings in a bare tree yesterday. I did like the shapes, so:
convert IMG_1502.jpeg -scale 1200 -threshold 30% -fill white +opaque black bw-1200.png
Read: The Drowned by John Banville ★★★★☆ 📚
A who done it, that doesn’t focus of the crime or solution. Follows on from the previous one in a series, nothing is really clear, characters uncertain about most things. Lots of moral ambiguity.
Read: Groundbreakers- The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar by Chantal Lyons ★★★★☆ 📚
The author’s fascination with boar & belief in the good they could do to the environment doesn’t stop her reporting on both points of view. The difference between European acceptance & Uk fears is telling.
I saw this just after reading Chaudhri Sher Mobarik looks at the loch which I enjoyed. A poet raised in Glasgow.
Having coffee by the trig point, heard some ravens and went to look over the steep side. Below a hen harrier took off, curved and headed off over the moor. Blurry photo, clear memory.
via @nitinkhanna:
A new study found that half of the world’s carbon emissions come from the richest 10% of people.
Billionaires Are the One Case Where Personal Choices Can Affect Climate Change
Which points to Carbon Inequality Kills: Why curbing the excessive emissions of an elite few can create a sustainable planet for all – Oxfam Policy & Practice
We share new evidence of how the yachts, jets and polluting investments of the 50 richest billionaires are accelerating the climate crisis. Oxfam’s research shows that the emissions of the world’s super-rich 1% are causing economic losses of trillions of dollars; contributing to huge crop losses; and leading to millions of excess deaths.
Last year: I am now more than one term into what looks like being my final year as a full time teacher. I got OAP status earlier this year, but aim to wait till I am a year older, before I take my pensions. I’ve had an idea that I’d write something about this. But strangely nothing coalesces.
Read: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett ★★★★★ 📚
A book around a famous (in the USA?) play I’ve never heard of. Compelling & mostly comfortable. Laugh out loud sometimes too.
A few years ago1 I tested the WP OSM plugin. I didn’t get it to do exactly what I wanted so left it on the back burner. In the mean time I made a map system of my own. The plugin had been producing some security warnings from Jetpack and I’d deactivated it. Last week I saw some fixes and through I’d try it again. Using the gpx file I recorded last week and the associated flickr album2 I had another go.
I created the kml file with gvellut/flickr2kml, which is a command line app, to convert a flickr album url to a kml file with images. The map above combines the gpx track & kml file.
The result is not, so far, exactly what I hoped. I was thinking the images could be views at a larger size, or link to the bigger versions. I suspect I could use the flickr2kml templates to do that.
I am also wondering if I could overlay and overlap bigger versions of the images with some random transparency maybe something like this, but with some randomness:
Glen-Finlas-Dream-paths | John Johnston | FlickrA few things to think about.
- 9 years ago, not sure where the time goes! ↩︎
- I used this in my own system: 2024-09-27 Finlas Loop ↩︎
I went back to a familiar walk today. The circuit of small hills round the Finlas Reservoir. The day started very bright with a clear blue sky. Once I was past the farm I started hearing the stags roaring in the distance. I saw and heard a lot of deer today.
walkmapGoing up Creaghan Hill most of the flora had died back, a few sparks of bog and common heather and some scabious for the most part. The bracken dying back. More deer on the hill and on the way to Beinn Ruisg. Colder on the hill and it started to get cloudy from the north. Between Beinn Ruisg and Creag an Leinbh, I saw lot of deer, most gathered in groups with one or more roaring stags. Spent a while watching. A few chases between stags but nothing serious. One 12 pointer was most active, fighting reed beds and following hinds.
By the time I got to the unnamed top between Creag an Leinbh and Balcnock, I could see quite a lot of heave clouds to the north. Ben Lomond got one or two showers, but I stayed dry.
Walking along the fence from Balcnock I put up a couple of snipe. One from my feet. I could see the ‘form’ it had been hiding in, surrounded by splatter of white droppings.
I went further along the fence, or near to it, than normal, finally cutting down past the reservoir. The Rowan are well covered in berries. It is fascinating to see where they manage to grow out of the way of sheep and deer. They were really shining in the sun, the higher ones already leafless with very pale bark were particularly dramatic.
Given I’ve not walked much this year, I was quite pleased with my puff. Even though it took nearly 7 hours for 10 miles I did spend a lot of time sitting watching the deer. Didn’t see another human.
Half an hours drive from Glasgow. About an hours walk so far. Sun is shining, stags roaring and a raven croaks. Good start to the September weekend. No one else around.
Bookmarked gpx.studio — home.
just used this briefly today to trim a track I didn’t stop at the right time. Worked a treat.
A walk from Braeval car park near Aberfoyle today. The weather put me off the hills. Given low cloud general dullness I took a few photos of small things.
Listened to 220. Autumn Journal – Rerun — Backlisted Where actor Sam West read a rather lovely section of the poem. A bit of a search found Mr West’s collection of #PandemicPoems music on soundcloud. Not sure how I missed that. Delighted to find
Read: Cairn by Kathleen Jamie ★★★★★ 📚
The common curlew, as the old books have it,
Fragments, essays, poems & notes, following the natural world, and the mess we have made of it. Beautiful.
Read: West by Carys Davies ★★★★★ 📚
There is something endlessly pleasant about the quick flurries of bats in the trees at this time of day, and the soft crepitation of insects all around: a steady in-out susurration as if the earth itself is breathing.
Lovely book so brief & clear. A handful of characters, simply drawn. Cy, obsessed by possible monsters heads west into wild lands leaving his daughter in an awful situation.
Bookmarked How can I help autistic pupils develop more independence in learning tasks? by Lynn McCann.
things to consider
A little housekeeping today, via my On This Day page. Three title added and an archive.org link added to a broken link.
There are 8 posts found on this site published on September 7
- September 7, 2019
- Cashel Forest
- Read: The Fortnight in September
- Read: City of Girls
- Liked: The Most Powerful Change I’ve Ever Made in My Practice.
- September 7, 2017
- Possibly time to get a new kneeling chair. …
- September 7, 2009
- Sandaig Primary Weblogs Move
- September 7, 2006
- More Suite Progress
- PivotThe above list is produced by Alan’s plugin, I’ve not used the arbitrary day option before. I do occasionally/ semi regularly/ when I feel like it, fix up a few posts in this way using the On this Day page. It is quite a pleasurable activity.
Read: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray ★★★★☆ 📚
Irish private boy’s school. Some laugh out loud teenage dialogue, some horrible teenage drama. Multiple voices & pov weave towards a messy ending that didn’t quite pay off for me, although that might be the point. Still kept me reading for nearly 700 pages.
I started this two weeks ago when I went back to school. So past time for a summer recap:
As usual I took some photos, and I’ve strung them together, pummelvision fashion.
I updated the script a bit to fade the audio and added a gentler audio choice.
reading1. Read: The Last Voice You Hear 11/08/2024 tagged: Mick Herron, ★★★ 2. Read: The Lost Wife 08/08/2024 tagged: Susanna Moore, ★★★★ 3. Read: Hide and Seek 03/08/2024 tagged: Ian Rankin, ★★★ 4. Read: Chain-Gang All-Stars 29/07/2024 tagged: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, ★★★ 5. Read: The Secret Hours 27/07/2024 tagged: Mick Herron, ★★★★ 6. Read: The Sun Walks Down 24/07/2024 tagged: Fiona Mcfarlane, ★★★★★ 7. Read: Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen 18/07/2024 tagged: Michelle Gallen, ★★★★ 8. Read: Long Island by Colm Tóibín 15/07/2024 tagged: Colm Tóibín, ★★★★★ 9. Read: The Drowning Pool 07/07/2024 tagged: Ross Macdonald, ★★★★ 10. Read: Brooklyn 06/07/2024 tagged: Colm Tóibín, ★★★★★ 11. Read: The Slain Birds 03/07/2024 tagged: Michael Longley, ★★★★ 12. Read: To the Dogs 02/07/2024 tagged: Louise Welsh, ★★★★ 13. Read: Clear by Carys Davie 30/06/2024 tagged: Carys Davies, ★★★★★ 14. Read: Bad Actors by Mick Herron 30/06/2024 tagged: Mick Herron, ★★★★
NotedI’ve continued trying to write one note a day on ‘something natural’ and recording each months notes.
Under The WeatherThis summer has certainly not been good on the weather front, the tail end of a bug which seemed to take a long time to go away also slowed me down for most of July. Although I walked around a fair bit very locally (Kilpatrick Hills, Cochno etc). I didn’t add much to the walk list. I still managed to see a few new things (at least to photograph).
Glow BlogsI continued working one day a week on Glow Blogs. There was a release (Glow Blogs Update 14 Aug 2024), just after the schools returned. I spent a fair bit of time writing and updating the various sites that comprise the help system. Checking things out and spending a lot more time in the Block Editor. Lots more to come on that front. I feel the use of blogs in teaching has decreased a bit but I believe they can still be useful in lots of different ways.
Online FunI’ve continued to use my blog (syndicated to mastodon & Bluesky via micro.blog) instead of X. I noticed a fresh flush of twitter educators coming through to Bluesky after Musk’s support for the extreme right in the UK.
I did a few The DS106 Daily Creates, but less than usual, my favourites were #tdc4584 &
TDC 5491.
I dodged away at a personal Flickr search page, Search Flickr – Results by Month, as I like comparing things I’ve seen throughout the year organised by month. I’ve already something similar for this blog.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/july.mp3July Noted, One thing a day noticed and noted. Rather late on recording again.
Likes Sign the MPAs Petition.
The government was originally required to get these measures in place by 2016, and then by 2020. But by 2024, little has been done.
This cannot go on. The Scottish government must end the delays and act now to take this crucial step in helping our seas recover.
I’ve noticed a few follows & folk to follow appearing on Bluesky today. I wonder if they have been driven from X by the latest mess. I’ve been exploring Bluesky, more so Mastodon & less Threads. Treating them as distribution for my blog. Micro.blog is excellent glue for Posse & a nice place.
Read: The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Heron ★★★ 📚
Effective Detective as you would expect. Maybe a bit too much physical action for me. Nice twist to end setting up further stories.
Wandering round the Pittenweem Art Festival yesterday. The village is fascinating, a jumble of twists & turns. I particularly enjoyed the work of Pauline Burbidge, Charles Poulsen & Sophie Demery.
Bookmarked Configuring Audacity – nocmig.
A fresh installation of Audacity isn’t optimised for scanning nocmig recordings, but with some simple tweaks it can be ready on demand.
This is interesting. I’ve been dabbling in bird song with Merlin recently. I didn’t know you could use Audacity to see audio as a Spectrogram. This post shows how.
I’ve only just head of nocmig.
The nocturnal equivalent of visible migration watching, and typically employs sound recording equipment to capture the flight calls of migrating birds.
nocmig – Recording nocturnal bird migration
Which looks/sounds interesting. Could be a bit of a rabbit hole: Guest blog: A DIY low-budget NocMig parabolic microphone, Although I don’t think my diy skills are up to this.
Read: The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore ★★★★☆ 📚
Short but engaging fiction based on a real life memoir. Settlers & Sioux clash in 1855. The narrator, Sarah, has no self pity despite a troubled life. Felt like a realistic picture of the times both filthy & surprising. Characters are complex.
Likes Blog Gardening by Jamie Thingelstad.
It makes me happy to make these small fixes. I bet it is like a gardener that pulls some weeds in their garden. My website will be some part of my legacy, and this small daily task makes that legacy a little bit better all the time.
I’ve be doing something similar with a lot less rigour since I added my on this day page. Some great ideas here for improving my process.
Bookmarked Adding a delay to the end of an animated gif by Robin.
gifsicle -U original.gif "#0--2" -d200 "#-1" -O2 > with-delay.gif
This is useful, I am making quite a lot of gifs for Glow Blogs help at the moment. Current workflow: export from screenflow as a mp4, Gif Brewery to create a gif and then this to add a bit of a delay and reduce file size. There is a nice explanation of the parameters.
Doune Hill & Beinn Eich via Glen Mollochan
Overcast day with a threat of rain later.
Clouds low, on the top of the hill a few times. Quite a breeze higher up.
Quiet, no one else on the hill.
Not much in the way of wildlife, a few deer & the odd raven croak.
Notes & photos: walkmap
Read: Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin ★★★☆☆ 📚
I am reading more Rankin, not necessarily in the right order. This early Rebus is a wee bit different than the later versions. A nicely tangled plot woven across Edinburgh society from junkies to the higher reaches. Corruption all the way.
We saw few Common Ringed Plover chicks yesterday on Barassie Beech. Given the numbers of dogs being walked along the beech I am surprised that they survive. The parent birds seem to try and draw us off, buy running along or down the shore, while the wee ones head in the other direction.
I had a walk round Ardmore Yesterday. From the top left: Red-tailed bee on knapweed, robin, heron, osprey, map of where whotos were taken, white butterfly, two little egrets, two little egrets again, meadow brown butterfly. I got to watch the osprey and egrets fishing for a while.
I was watching this green-veined white fluttering across the path and into the birch leaves. It closed its wings and vanished. Scanning with the zoom lens I could not find it until I notice this shield bug then the butterfly behind it. #butterfly
Read: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah ★★★☆☆ 📚
Dystopia, prisoners fight to the death. Illuminating prisons & racism. Parallels with sport, advertising & reality TV. Quite a page turner, too much on weapons, technical details etc. great footnotes mix fact & fiction.
Walk with Christine yesterday afternoon. Unusually quiet, only a couple of folk around. Map & photos:
walkmap
Likes Happy 12 years of #POSSE and 19 years of #microformats! by Tantek Çelik.
A great set of links and info. I started gently scratching the indieWeb itch here is 2015 when I installed some of the plugins. I still think it is a good idea.
Read: The Sun Walks Down by Fiona Mcfarlane ★★★★★ 📚
A lost boy in the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century. The many searchers & their tangled involvement with each other, the land & the landscape weave in & out of the story. Great detail about each without losing momentum.
This was the time of day when the sun touched the red hill and the gods came creeping out of it—out of the sun. They parted the branches of the cypress tree and stepped with care over the rocks at the top of the hill. They ran like water down the hill, and their footsteps were like water around the corners of the house.
Likes My current Webmention setup by Nick Simson.
but I thought it may be helpful to share my configuration settings and demonstrate how I’m using both the Webmention plugin and IndieBlocks on the same site.
Helpful indeed. I wish I’d taken some notes as I went along on this site. I think I may have woven a tangled web.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/June.mp3
June Noted, from this idea, started here. One thing a day noticed and noted. Rather late on recording.
Read: Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen ★★★★☆ 📚
Majella is autistic but might not know it. Her mum is a hopeless alcoholic, her dad one of Northern Ireland’s disappeared. Her uncle had blown himself up & her grannie has just been murdered. Her house mostly filthy, her town pretty horrible too. This account of her likes & dislikes over a few days felt quite unpleasant to start with but grew on me. Not a lot of plot, but Majella is a fascinating & engaging character.
Read: Long Island by Colm Tóibín ★★★★★ 📚
Quiet, subtle and thrilling. Characters fail to communicate, wait too long for the right moment and miss and hit opportunities.
This photo from yesterday gave me a smile. I thought I’d caught the #bee on the meadowsweet. #BloomScrolling #bees
In reply to https://jan.boddez.net/notes/07e0df2cff by Jan.
That’s also why your post content wouldn’t break, if you were to disable IndieBlocks. (I.e., while the dynamically generated “theme blocks,” like the Facepile block for webmentions, would “disappear,” posts should remain intact.)
Thanks Jan, the not breaking part is really important. I am using IndieBlocks more as I transition slowly to blocks here. I also just had the thought I could look at the code view with the reply block to get a template I could use with TextMate so that those posts word be the same as ones make with IndieBlocks.
I was thinking of the Site Editor as I was using it elsewhere to make templates for different posts, but I think that is a red herring. Now I think about it templates are more about the look and layout.
Butterfly Day. Walking to Greenside Reservoir this afternoon. Felt like summer. Lots of butterflies. I’d guess over a hundred ringlets, a few meadow browns, some dark green and small pearl-bordered fritillaries, a couple of common blues.
Replied to a reply by Ton Zijlstra (zylstra.org)
In reply to a bookmark by John JohnstonThe templates contain what I want to have inside a blogposting for a reply, favourite, bookmark, rsvp or check-in. I apply them before I submit something to WordPress, so they are fully outside of my blog and get send as HTML to my blog.Two main ways: if I ty...
Thanks Ton, Having your own snippets sounds like a great idea. As I post via the class & block editor and using TextMate at different times a method independent of my blog would work for me.
The goal of FeedLand is to make news a social thing, following the pattern of social media apps, but using open formats and protocols.
So FeedLand is feeds, news and people and software that connects it all together.
FeedLand: Getting started with FeedLand
Bookmarked Disabled PostKinds Plugin by Ton Zijlstra.
My main issue with it was that it places key elements such as the weblink you’re responding to outside the posting itself. It gets stored in the database as belonging to the PostKinds plugin. Meaning if you ever switch it off, that gets wiped from your posting (although it’s still in the database then). This was a dependency I needed to get rid of.
This crosses my mind from time to time. I depend on without fully understanding the Post Kinds plug-in. I am halfway between Post Kinds and IndieBlocks as I use Blocks a bit more. I’ve used them a lot on Glow Blogs am and less worried about switching to them full time. I wonder about,
deploying small templates that allow me to mark a posting as reply, rsvp, favourite, bookmark, or check-in, within the postings I’m writing.
as mentioned in Ton Zijlstra’s post.
I wonder if these are an alternative to IndieBlocks or something else. Can you make templates with the correct microformats in the Site Editor? But that would not work as semipress is not a block theme so I guess the template would be php?
Beinn Bhreac & Ben Reoch yesterday.
Flora:
Bog Asphodel
Bog Myrtle
Bog Cotton
Tormentil
Fox gloves
Marsh orchid
Eye bright
Bedstraw
Milkwort
Bog heather
Bell heather
Saxifrage
Lousewort
Marsh thistle
map & notes
Read ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’ll come back’: Palestinian birdwatchers defy danger to scan the skies by Guardian staff reporter
Gathering on a wooded hilltop overlooking terraces of olive trees and vineyards, a group of ninth-grade girls from the Aida refugee camp watch as Michael Farhoud, a researcher at the Environmental Education Centre (EEC) in Beit Jala, attaches a ring to the leg of a chiffchaff.The tiny olive-brown warbler was caught in nets that morning. Farhoud explains to the schoolgirls how ringing tracks birds' movements.
I saw a chiffchaff or willow warbler with a ring the other day. I wonder if it had passed through Palestine.
Read: The Slain Birds by Michael Longley ★★★★ 📚
The ravens in conversation overhead might be Discussing us or that sheep dead in a hollow With its yellow ear-tag and delicate black feet.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/noted-may-2024.mp3
May Noted, from this idea, started here. One thing a day noticed and noted. Rather late on recording.
Read: Clear by Carys Davies ★★★★★ 📚
I loved this short tale, 1840, 3 characters, the split in the Kirk & the clearances.
There was a word in Ivar’s language for the moment before something happens; for the state of being on the brink of something.
Small Heath Butterfly on Thyme, seen on the walk up to Greenside Reservoir today. Lots of Ringlets and Goldfinches.
Bookmarked How France Adopts An Open Source-Based Education Strategy – Free of Big Tech by Pernille Tranberg.
Kauffmann said that France has never officially embraced big tech in schools, which makes the project easier, and that the public generally is skeptic towards monopolies and the abuse of private data. The country is thus undergoing a cultural shift in the digital education sector, promoting the use of free, open, and interoperable code, data, and content, referred to as “digital commons”. This approach encompasses not only free licenses but also community involvement and governance.
How France Adopts An Open Source-Based Education Strategy – Free of Big Tech · Dataetisk Tænkehandletank
Found via a boost from @FourthWorld@mastodon.online might be an exciting move from France. Back in 2014-15 when I was working with Ian Stuart on the Glow Scotland reboot, we talked a lot about OpenSource and, AFAIR, talked to someone who came over from Paris to show us an open source solution they were using there at the time.
My last day of term plan yesterday was a scavenger hunt, Capture the Flag and tidy our MakerSpace.
The scavenger hunt was made in Keynote, a slide for each challenge.
I’ve recently read Digital Scavenger Hunts – DigiLearnFalk which shows how to make really attractive one-slide digital hunts in keynote. Using place holders. They have even some nice templates to use.
My own approach is much less attractive. I wanted quite a long list of ‘things’ to find and wanted to add audio to the video/photo mix. The result is much uglier, but only takes a couple of minutes to make.
I write (or copy from a list or lists found online ) & edit the list in a text editor. Then copy it.
- Open Keynote & make a new Presentation.
- Create a title slide.
- Make a new slide and set the from a to section heading
- Change the view to outline and paste in my list. This makes a slide for each line.
- Select all the new slides and choose Reapply Layout to Slide from the Format menu.
- Edit the Slide Layout and move the section heading to the top.
Keynote Scavenger Hunt – No AudioI use Keynote every day in my class. Perhaps unfortunately for my class, I spend very little time designing slides. I mainly choose the default black on white theme. I try to follow the advice of Robert Macmillan and keep my slides simple.
The class didn’t have time on Wednesday to do more than make the slides and then we reviewed them together. Given more time, it could have been a fun task for the pupils to make the slides look good.
Ardmore, a blustery day. The north bay calm out of the wind. For a few minutes I watched an osprey, circling round, at one point diving into the water, then up, empty clawed. Eventually it disappeared into the drizzle & haze. I got a few blurry photos, this is a crop.
Read: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray ★★★★★ 📚
A great read, multiple pov, full of surprises. Inside each character’s head indecision jerks chains. The stories shift between characters, each enough for a novel of its own. At first I felt some were left hanging, but it all weaves together.
Bookmarked First installation of BirdNET-Pi | Simon Dobson.
The BirdNET-Pi system aims to provide out-of-the-box bird identification. It’s slightly more awkward than that, but still pretty straightforward to get up and running.
Might be a nice summer project to take back to school.
Walked to Loch Humphrey this morn. Warm, cloudy a slight breeze. The ground sparkling with flowers. Meadowsweet coming out. Plenty of birds too. Whitethroat singing in the new trees. A skylark bathing in the path dust. Butterflies: Meadow Browns, Ringlets & a Small pearl-bordered Fritillary.
BloomScrolling, #Flora, #BloomStrolling
A walk around Ardinning, quiet (Euros?), warm, 17! cloudy with a nice breeze. First Ringlets and small heaths I’ve seen this year.
Dad’s day walk to Duncolm in the rain this morning. Lots of wee flowers. Plenty of birds too. Young warblers hiding in the bracken. Cuckoos calling, a pair flew by. Whinchat and Wheatear on the moor, larks and more.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/bird-song-2024-06-16-1220 PM.mp3
looks like a little library in Naseby Park. I wonder how it is going to cope with the damp climate in Scotland.
Read: Slough House by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚
Best one in the last few I’ve read. Although the back & forth between different fields of action at a cliff hanger is predictably it works. Politically incorrect attitudes from Jackson still funny. More emotion & connection to the characters.
I just saw What is Digital Literacy? A guest blog from Andy McLaughlin, University of Aberdeen – DigiLearn and a pointer to the discussion on LinkedIn.
But what do we do there – if we go open source or other methods are we giving our young people the skills to enter the workplace .
Ian Gibson
Ian and John, I’d love to hear your take on the idea that Big Tech’s “efficiency agenda” has been the biggest hindrance to digital skill development.
Andy McLaughlin
There is a lot of interesting ideas popping up in the conversation. I joined in, although I don’t really have a clear idea as to where I stand. Quite quickly I reached LinkedIn’s maximum character limit, so though I’d post here and link in there, POSSE style. Here are the rather ragged thoughts I wanted to post:
Of course in Scotland we have access to an Open Source product in the form of WordPress 😉 But I doubt there is much awareness of Open Source generally among my colleagues. As a primary teacher, I need to get my head round hundreds of experiences and outcomes, leaving little time for the reading, never mind the thinking needed in this area.
Open Source is involved in many work places. Some even owned by ‘Big Tech’. Unfortunately Open Source and open technologies (RSS for example) do not have an army of paid and unpaid evangelists in the same way as ‘Big Tech’.
I am not suggesting we should abandon Big Tech, but we should be able to think about the implication
I recently quoted this:
warning parents that although they think they are giving their children access to the internet, they are really giving the internet access to their children.
BBC World Service – The Documentary Podcast, Assignment: Ireland’s phone-free town
Could we replace parents by educators, children by pupils and internet by ‘Big Tech’.
Not sure I fully grok Big Tech’s “efficiency agenda” but to my mind it might be jumping into using tech too far from the base metal? Just a few (20) years ago, I’d start teaching pupils some basic text editing, a wee bit about the difference between bitmap and vector image software before moving on to more complex tools. I think I’d rather see a pupil ‘misusing’ powerPoint or Keynote to make their own creative images than cycling through possibilities in a more sophisticated tool.
I am also open to the idea that a bit of friction in your toolkit might mean to spending a bit more time thinking.
Bookmarked BBC World Service – The Documentary Podcast, Assignment: Ireland’s phone-free town.
warning parents that although they think they are giving their children access to the internet, they are really giving the internet access to their children.
I’ve not listened to this yet but this jumped out at me.
Read: The Vagrants by Yiyun Li ★★★★☆ delicately written, horrifying account of lives in post Mao (just) China. There are very few moments of hope but my sympathy for the characters ran deep.
In reply to Women Butchers Why shouldn’t women become butchers?.
And through experience and practice that you start seeing
all of the different parts, you start seeing all of the different muscle groups, and you learn how to separate them. And this is one of the reasons why it’s not a job of strength necessarily, because when you have a sharp knife that works just right and you know where to place it, the meat just comes apart on its own, all of the different muscles. I mean, I don’t know how graphic I can get — as graphic as you like —
Okay, so you have say two pieces of muscle and inside, in between is the seam, you can cut on the top of the seam, and if you cut just right in two pieces of muscles, you can just pull it apart with your hands.Martina
Jeremy (@jeremycherfas) this reminds me of Chuang-tzu’s Cook Ting:
I rely on Heaven’s structuring, cleave along the main seams, let myself be guided by the main cavities, go by what is inherently so. A ligament or tendon I never touch, not to mention solid bone. A good cook changes his chopper once a year, because he hacks. A common cook changes it once a month, because he smashes. Now I have had this chopper for nineteen years, and have taken apart several thousand oxen, but the edge is as though is were fresh from the thickness; if you insert what has no thickness where there is an interval, then, what more could you ask, of course there is ample room to move the edge about. That’s why after nineteen years the edge of my chopper is as thought it were fresh from the grindstone.
The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the Book ‘Chuang-tzu’ by Chuang-tzu, A. C. Graham
I bet you could do a beautifully readable blog by just dynamically rendering its RSS feed. Why bother statically rendering the home page, month page, day page or pages for each individual post. Dynamic servers are so cheap these days.
from: Scripting News: Sunday, June 2, 2024
I wonder if this is what Dave means: almost 20 years ago, when I started podcasting with my primary school class at Radio Sandaig (Archive.org link), I didn’t really know what I was doing. At first I had created the RSS feed ‘by hand’ in a text editor then made a php page to read the feed in and create the web page. We didn’t have any day, month or even individual episode pages, just the home page. With only 30 or so episodes over 4 or 5 years this was quite manageable.
.
Walk to Greenside: lots of white butterflies, a few orange tips & some peacocks. A large red damselfly or two, first damselflies I’ve seen this year. Everything green has doubled in volume.
Short walk along the pipe track at Strathblane this afternoon. Quite warm and sunny. Lots of Orange Tip butterflies & a few whites around. A few more photos on flickr.
Bookmarked 20 outdoor bird games and activities (creativestarlearning.co.uk)
When learning about nature and wildlife, experiential outdoor sessions need to happen. We need children to play and to practice key skills so that observing and understanding birds is a key focus of our time.Over the decades , a number of outdoor educators such as Joseph Cornell, Steve Van Matre, T...
This and Creating Bird Friendly Schools and Nurseries | Creative STAR Learning | I’m a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here!
I just found this post in my drafts, last edit September 2023, the bug mentioned is still there and I think it is worth remembering the creativity shown by my class.
For the past couple of weeks, we have been working on a micro:bit project in class. One of the interesting aspects of working with a diverse group is the need to introduce new ideas and topics to the class, especially when some students already have experience in the area. This year, my class is Primary 5, 6, and 7. The Primary 7s have already had some exposure to micro:bit and other block coding environments.
I decided to focus on the virtual pets project from the makecode site for our first project. In my classroom, we use the micro:bit app on our iPads for coding, and it and the micro:bits has had a couple of useful improvements. Since the last session, the ability to download data to the iPad has been introduced, although we haven’t explored it yet, but I hope to do so soon. Another improvement is a simpler method for resetting the micro:bit when connecting via Bluetooth, making it more accessible for smaller fingers.
I introduced the topic by discussing Tamagotchi pets, which I remember being popular in my class over two decades ago. The virtual pet project is a lot simpler in comparison, with just two features: when a pet is stroked, it smiles, and when it’s shaken, it frowns.
The limited functionality left plenty of room for exploration for the 5 primary 7s with experience. Leaving plenty of time for me to make sure the others managed the basics, linking to. Micro:bit flashing code etc. I did drop the words food and health into the conversation but didn’t go any further.
We ended up having three sessions with the micro:bits and I was delighted with the results. Between them the sevens recalled variables from last year and were off. We ended up with pets needing fed to avoid death, being sick if fed too much and getting annoyed if they were petted too much. The younger pupils managed the basics and extended them in simpler ways, animating chewing and drinking or reacting to different buttons.
One primary six who had previous experience did just as well as the primary sevens, his pet had these features:
- Sleep
- Be happy if stroked (press logo)
- Be sad if shaken
- Die (wait long enough and don’t feed it)
- Be sick if fed to much(can be cured using b)
- Be scared (by making a noise/blowing/filling the red bar 180+)
- Be fed (using A)
- Get a health check (A+B)
micro pets on the Banton Biggies
The first three were part of the class instructions, taken from the make code site, the rest were pupil ideas.
Of course lots of mistakes were made along the way, but it was great to see solutions worked out, shared with neighbours and lights go on. Quite a few pupils used wee bits of free time to explore and test ideas completely independently.
On Friday we went to post on our e-portfolios about the work and embed your pets in the blogs. Editing the shortcode to do this is a bit tricky and we also ran into a problem with the simulator not embedding properly. Half the micro:bits were hidden. At first I thought this would be a problem with Glow Blogs, but later investigation showed it to be a problem with the makecode code. We workaround it by embedding the editor rather than the simulator. I do hope the makecode folk sort this out. Since it affects their documentation too I expect they will.
I continue to be a micro:bit fan and will be using them throughout the year, hopefully incorporating it into our makerspace projects too.
Image Accessibility Creator · Streamlit
Impressive ai generated descriptions and alt text from images. I found adding even a one word helped.
Via Doug Belshaw: How to easily generate image descriptions and alt text | Thought Shrapnel
After taking a screenshot I fed it back to the webpage (too tempting) and got:
Image Description: A screenshot of a webpage with the header “asuo-ai-labs.streamlit.app” shown in the top center. The screen is divided into two main sections. On the left, under the heading “Image and Details,” there is a section for uploading an image. A placeholder box labeled “Drag and drop file here” or “Browse files” is visible. Below it, there is a thumbnail of an image labeled “IMG_9865.jpeg” which is 2.8 MB in size. The image thumbnail shows a European Goldfinch perched on a budding branch against a clear blue sky. Below the thumbnail, there is a toggle switch labeled “Add details about the image,” which is turned on. A text box is filled in with the word “Goldfinch.”
On the right side of the webpage, there is a section labeled “Image Description.” Below it, a detailed description of the image is provided, as well as a short alt text. The image description reads: “The image features a European Goldfinch perched on a budding branch against a backdrop of a clear blue sky. The Goldfinch displays vibrant plumage with a distinctive red face, a mix of black and white on its head, a warm beige chest, and brownish wings with yellow accents. The branch, adorned with small, white buds and green leaves, stretches horizontally across the bottom right of the image, while the bird is slightly right of center. The serene sky comprises soft, light blue gradients without any visible clouds.”
The alt-text reads: “European Goldfinch perched on a budding branch against a clear blue sky.”
Alt-Text: Webpage with description and image of a European Goldfinch on a branch against a blue sky.
In reply to gratefully inspired by joe jenett.
Hi Joe, glad you are good. Your dedication to linking certainly inspires me!
Thanks for the comment. I think of taking photos more like a notepad than ‘photography’. I use my camera for recall, identifying things and quite often instead of binoculars. I use a bridge camera with a 60x zoom. Always shoot auto. My framing is often pot luck especially zoomed in. I occasionally think I should get a DSLR (or some-such) and a big lens, but I’d never learn to use it and could not really justify the cost.
Short walk round Ardinning this morning, warm, thinks about being muggy if not for the breeze. Cuckoos calling, cuckoo & bluebells around. Green Veined Whites, Orange Tips and a Red Admiral.
Likes Fixing microformat support on Twenty Twenty WordPress theme by Tracy Durnell.
handy if I ever change theme.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/April.mp3April Noted, from this idea, started here. One thing a day noticed and noted.
This morning I joined in with the reveil Dawn Chorus Day 2024.
Reveil (2014—) is a collective production by streamers at listening points around the earth. Starting on the morning of Saturday 4 May in South London near the Greenwich Meridian, the broadcast will pick up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following the wave of intensified sound that loops the earth every 24 hours at first light.
I was streaming from Victoria Park, a short walk from our flat. I was on my way by 4:00
I had to change my audio setup a little this year, a new phone put my lightning mic out of action, so I used a h4n recorder as a mic.
It was dark overcast and the ground was pretty wet, but it didn’t rain. All the way to the park the blackbirds were already singing loudly. A shadow fox seemed to be around a bin but no one else was about. There was a bit of traffic on the Expressway making a noise.
I got set up and was streaming by 4:30.An old sim-less iPhone 6 using my broadcasting phone as a hot point allowed me to listen at the same time. It is quite strange listening to local birds in one ear and ones that are very far away in the other.
Unfortunately although I could hear the main stream the IRC widget on the page didn’t work for me. When I tested it earlier in the 24 hours it was fine, but this morning it wanted a password…
A short clip of my stream.I could listen and see what was playing, look at the schedule and figure out it might be a little behind. I kept my broadcast running. I think just after 5:30 I heard a shout out for my stream. Unfortunately by that time a helicopter was flying around the park and the result was pretty unpleasant. The broadcast moves quite swiftly on to the next stream.
A clip with helicopter, I think this is what was broadcast, around a minute in!Dawn View ~ 5:30amReveil was a good excuse/motivator to get up and listen for a while. I found it hard to listen and identify any birds locally, while listening to other sites. My bird song knowledge is not good. The old iPhone 6 wouldn’t let me use the Merlin app to sound ID. I am also interested in distributed collaboration so the whole process was good to see. There were some amazing broadcasts form around the world.
Listening back to some of my recordings I can hear just how much traffic and noise pollution there is even with helicopters.
If this is on next year and I join in, I might try going further afield to somewhere with less traffic and thinking about a better second device. I suppose that I could also try getting up and 3:30am all by myself, but I am not sure I’ve got the willpower or my wife would understand.
A local walk this morn. Round Gartnavel & up to the fishmongers. #Flora #Bloomscrolling #BloomStrolling thanks to @magsamond for the last tag. A gentle one. First Hawthorn too.
AI in action
In the vast sea of educational blogs, The Learning Hub shines as a beacon of insightful content and valuable resources. With a dedication to excellence and a passion for learning, this blog has become a go-to destination for educators, students, and parents alike.
This was posted in response to a post on the Glow Blog help: Glow Blogs Start of Session FAQ 2022.
I’ve been generating a bit of text for example sites recently and this text has the same smell I get from ChatGPT and co-pilot.
I’ve loved RSS since I started blogging. I’ve been using Feedland as an RSS reader since it started.
Feedland is an interesting and opinionated take on an RSS reader. I particularly like the way it makes me think about the interface & purpose of readers.
Dave Winer has been writing a lot about blogrolls recently. He developing a way for you to display a list of Feedland feeds on a drummer blog and now in WordPress. I tried both and they work.
I had been displaying my Feedland feeds on my blogroll page. I am using some Javascript of my own. Inn my sidebar using the links widget and Jan Boddez‘s plugin to sync my links with Feedland. My new Feedland Blogroll uses Dave’s technology.
A Feedland blogroll is a bit different than a straightforward list of links. It is more like a mini feedreader. Each link can be expanded to show the recent posts from a site. The list is constantly reordered to show the most updated site at the top. This reordering points to the river of news idea, I think, as opposed to the completionist way of doing things. There is no marking things as read. It is a handy way to read and a great alternative to other feed readers.
I just added my whole list of Feedland feeds. This is a subset of RSS feeds I’ve followed, some from years ago, it is not yet thoughtful list. All of the recent blogroll discussion has had me thinking a bit about this.
When I started blogging, pre twitter, a lot of my posts were in response to other ‘ScotEduBloggers’. For a while we had a lively community going. Back then I could have really used this Feedland style blog roll in my sidebar. The blogroll then would have reflected this community. The conversation then moved on to twitter and other places, even LinkedIn!
Now I am thinking that my blogroll should go on its own page. To use as a casual feedreader by myself and a source of interesting sources for others.
The perceived audience might affect the feeds I include. If I was creating a blogroll to share links I might skip many of the more popular and well shared feeds and concentrate on ones that might not be so obvious. For example I don’t support many mac inclined people would need a link to Daring Fireball. If the audience is me, I might want a different set of feeds.
At the moment the plugin gets the users whose feeds and categories you display from the settings. I wonder could these be replace/augmented by parameters in the shortcode, for example instead of [feedland-blogroll] you could have [feedland-blogroll user="johnjohnston" category="nature" ] that would mean you could have different blogrolls on different pages.
The Feedland Blogroll interface is rather nice, reminiscent of Mac system 7 in some ways (my first ui and I loved it). It is a perfect fit for a blog sidebar on a desktop/laptop screen. I am wondering about a couple of things:
- Since I want it on a page on its own, would it be sensible to add a bit of css to fill more of my page.
- Could it be adapted for mobile. That is where I often read feeds. I’d like it to have a slightly bigger font so that the links and disclosure arrows are easier to hit. The interface has a nice tooltips on hover. I wonder could that be adapted for a phone.
I am not sure if these ideas are either practical or possible. I am sure The FeedLand Blogroll is an idea to follow.
Here is the WordPress plugin and instructions for Drummer.
A little prep today for Reveil 2024
The Reveil broadcast will again make a full loop of the earth over the Dawn Chorus Day weekend in May this year.
I’ll be streaming from Victoria Park from 4:40 UK time on Sunday 5 May.
Walk to Greenside: First Orange Tip Butterfly this year. A couple of peacocks too. Singing: cuckoo, willow warblers & chiffchaff, goldfinches. Lots of primroses in damp places.
Walking with Christine & Michael, up Troisgeach and over to Meall an Fhudair. The first cuckoo & lizards of the year. No deer or ravens, and eagle or two. Ptarmigan & Wheatear. Surprisingly dry underfoot and the lack of growth made for easier walking. walkmap
Blue sky, bees & birds. Felt like the first decent blue sky we have had in ages. I could hear the bees at the top of the willow trees.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-04-20-1132 AM.mp3
The FeedLand blogroll on Drummer blogs was a snip to set up. Here is mine. Looks very nice imo. I’ve not been blogging via drummer for a year, but Dave says there is a WordPress plugin in the works.
I’ve had my feedland blogroll on my WordPress site in a couple of different ways, via Jan’s plugin on the sidebar and my own script on a page. This is more interesting. Like Frank, I hope I can get the blogroll on it’s own page on my WordPress site. I am also just dumping my whole FeedLand list at the moment. I think I’d want to edit that down for a blog roll, perhaps missing out the more obvious links in favour of folk who I interact with.
I’ve had a blogroll on my site for most of its existence. There seems to be a bit of a resurgence at the moment. Hopefully this will lead to a more open and connected web. Dave’s version expands the concept from a list of links towards a feed reader experience. I am wondering if it is heading towards the way Ton’s feedreader seems to work. As it stands it is a great way to get reference links while writing.
Finally I and enjoying writing this post in Drummer, and am going to post it to my WordPress blog with a script Frank shared.
Published on my Oldschool Drummer blog
In reply to https://x.com/Mr_Minchin/status/1778675103540125929.
Maybe it’s because it’s been the holidays and I’ve had more time on my phone – but the amount of hate speech on social platforms 😥 People like Joey Barton able to tweet with impunity, vile TikTok comments the norm & never removed. More work for teachers brewing
Blair Minchen
And still we are here. It boggles my mind that nations, governments, schools use social media as their main conduit of information, platforms that they have no control of.
- Enshittification – Wikipedia
- Users, advertisers – we are all trapped in the ‘enshittification’ of the internet | John Naughton | The Guardian
- ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
The prompt for Day 14 of the April Photoblogging Challenge is cactus, suggested by Christopher, aka @christopherchelpka. I don’t seem many cacti here, so this is a spiky spear thistle. #mbapr
Internet pile-ons are pivotal to the plot. Do you use social media?
No, I’ve never had a Facebook account or anything. I find it depressing for people on the left to indulge the mechanisms of neoliberal tech-bro billionaires who make huge profits from algorithms that enable a bearpit mentality.from today’s observer I’m on the left – I’ve been in a union for years – Sunjeev Sahota
ironically, perhaps, the online title is Sunjeev Sahota: ‘I’ve always been in labour movements – but I’m critical of identity politics’
This is a favourite page. For Day 13 of the April Photoblogging Challenge. The prompt is page, suggested by Rob, aka @robj. #mbapr
Finlas Again: Beinn Ruisg & Creag an Leinbh: A walk in the very low clouds yesterday. Strong contrast between the lower ground and the hills, spring has arrived but it is not evenly distributed. some photos and notes: walkmap.
Read: Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆ 📚
Lots of fun, I chuckled my way through. Somewhat confused by the time travel, alternative paths and possible hallucinations. Isobel is 16 in the 60s. Her mum and dad disappear mysteriously. All the characters are strange.
Some links and interesting things I’ve noticed over the last couple of weeks
CardboardI like using cardboard in school, some inspiration.
2023 C.A.M.P.The Cardboard CollectiveThe Warehouse
As a working artist, I engage with kids as co-creators, seeking to share knowledge and expertise in context as ideas unfold and discoveries are made. I also share the art research processes and methods I use in my own art practice, as we take on projects big and small.
Amber Dohrenwend, Artist – Cool Tools
Amber Dohrenwend is an American artist based in Marquette, Michigan. She constructs post-consumer cardboard sculptures, costuming and installations.
Blog | MQTCompass.com
Amber Dohrenwend build an art installation out of locally recycled cardboard strips.
TechFFmpeg Explorer!
A tool to help you explore FFmpeg filters.
My use of ffmpeg is very basic indeed, mostly taking images and making video from them. This is much more advanced. I remember trying to make a video grid. Altough that post claims a quick try it took me a while and gave me a real headach trying to expand the grid. FFmpeg Explorer has an example that shows you how with a click. (can’t recall where I got this one, but thanks)
TiddlyPWA — TiddlyWiki Storage & Sync Solution
Have you ever wanted to combine the power and customizability of TiddlyWiki and the convenience of a modern offline-friendly, encrypted, synced notes app? Now you can! With…
HT Joe I use TW a bit at a beginners level. This looks nice and the syncing is interesting.
MediaTake to The Streets | Eparapo
My daughter sent me this, nice.
Rear Window Timelapse – Jeff Desom
Meticulously assembled using After Effects and Photoshop, Rear Window Loop is a large scale projection that shows Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 masterpiece as a never before seen panorama.
We were watching a tv show about Hitchcock, reminded me of this video.
WorryingDaring Fireball: Twitter/X’s Descent Into an Antisemitic Cesspool
Antisemitism is more than just a form of bigotry and hatred, it’s a millennia-old conspiratorial crackpot worldview. And Elon Musk is seemingly sinking into it.
Still the social network of choice by schools in Scotland.
‘Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon Don’t trust AI
The featured images is a montage of screenshots of some of the links. I’ve done that twice, so made an AppleScript.
mbsept Microblog September photo challenge 1 – Abstract. Barbara Hepworth through Barbara Hepworth.
Walk to Greenside reservoir this afternoon. Quite a few midge bites. Lots of seeds floating around. Goldfinches on the thistles, a sparrow hawk passed, lots of dragonflies on the path. Quite a few butterflies, mostly peacocks, odd green veined white & red admiral.
Read: We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker ★★★★☆ 📚 Murder mystery with arms & legs. Despite the rather unbelievable teenage, character, the twists and convolutions kept me reading and engaged. A nice distraction.
Read: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell ★★★★☆ 📚 Enjoyed the dip into the strange world of the 1500s Italy. Not quite as absorbing as Hamnet but I was engrossed, even though the murder is announced at the start I had my hopes up.
I was quite interested in this, but not enough to pay £7.50 a month for it. The need for an account and payment also rules it out of Glow Blogs too. I’ll continue to occasionally dabble with ChatGPT.
Just updated WordPress and I really like the Footnotes Block. I'd been hand rolling these here using TextMate.
I am beginning to like the block editor more. I've been testing on an updated for Glow Blogs. And started my class using it on their e-Portfolios today.
Really enjoyed listening (on Huffduffer for 30 days) to Preparing for ReclaimPress from YouTube even though it is not really in my wheelhouse (maybe a link to my Glow Blogs role). The possibilities for WordPress keep on growing. Jim talks about moving DS106 to this infrastructure. I still think DS106's WprdPress setup (as is micro.blog) is a great example of how we should run educational community.
I’ve been lucky, imo, to have been using an old 27 inch iMac as my computer in school since I started 8 years ago. Despite its age it has been a wonderful machine for me. Returning to my classroom last week I found it will no longer start up at all. No response to the […]
Second, companies rationalise these emissions by buying “Offsets”, which are the contemporary equivalent of the medieval indulgences that annoyed Martin Luther. John Naughton
Listening to @baldur on @martinfeld‘s Really Specific Stories. Glad I was driving, not sipping coffee! Contrary views to other episodes, strongly put across. Powerful on RSS & interface! Interesting on text vs podcasts vs video.
Heading for Meall an Fhudair, but very poor visibility so we turned back at Meall nan Caora just after Troisgeach. Still a great day, highlights lots of Scotch argus & a couple of eagles. Map:
We had a nice walk up to Greenside Reservoir this afternoon. Blue skies & clouds with a fair breeze. Lots of sees, thistles & rosebay all the way. lots of angelica & meadowsweet too. Plenty of butterflies, green veined whites, peacocks, a couple of red admirals and a small tortoiseshell. Quite a few small dragonflies […]
Read: You Have a Friend in 10A: Stories by Maggie Shipstead ★★★★★ 📚 Loved these absorbing stories. Wide ranging settings & situations. Plenty of surprises. The only disappointment, an expected last story turned into acknowledgments & extract from The Great Circle.
Users need storage. I have to provide them storage for their writing in Drummer, and in FeedLand for things like bookmarks, their personal feeds (ones they generate). Again, I have no interest in this. But I have to do it. And I am stuck paying for their files. They should be paying for them. Though […]
On a walk today I saw yet another birthday balloon (they get everywhere). When I went to pick it up and pop it in my rucksack I saw this wee guy, now Identified as a Vapourer Moth Caterpillar. looks like a punk type of bug.
Had a short walk around the braes, heather very purple, few butterflies around, and a couple of big dark blue dragonflies.
Classroom The hour approaches… Which One Doesn’t Belong? This is Which One Doesn’t Belong?, a website dedicated to providing thought-provoking puzzles for math teachers and students alike. There are no answers provided as there are many different, correct ways of choosing which one doesn’t belong. Enjoy! Solving word problems using tape diagrams – The Other […]
Linlithgow Palace Fountain Detail, I am not sure if this is a lion or sun man face? More snaps on flickr.
I am beginning to see more peacock butterflies again, this one and more at Old Kilpatrick yesterday.
I had a walk around Glen Douglas yesterday. Lots to see, more on the Missing from the photos are lots of Scotch Argus butterflies who did not stand still.
Between Beinn Bhrec & Ben Reoch Deer grazing, 50 yds ahead, I stop for a couple of snaps, they move off slowly, pausing. In front of me a fawn approaches to 20 yards, then stops & stares. I watch a moment then move to send it after the adults. 4 stags in velvet & 2 […]
Replied to Replied to Behind a login on LinkedIn For the last several years it has increasingly worried me that schools (governments & others institutions) used Twitter as their main publishing system. A system not designed for users but for advertisers and owners and more evidently recently their owner’s unsavoury ideas. We seem in some […]
This: Bob:Marley’s ‘War’ performed by Sinéad o’Connor! – YouTube Then this: Sinead O’Connor: ‘War’ live at the Bob Dylan Tribute. – YouTube The second is as brave a performance as could be.
Flora on Kilpatrick muir, At the back, common ling & bell heather. Some blaeberry leaves poking through. At the front, yellow bedstraw, harebells, yarrow, willow herb. Grasses with seed heads, Yorkshire fog and others.
Watched: Your website is a slow, bloated, carbon-belching monstrosity I watched this on Reclaim Open Online, I can not see how to link there so YouTube. An enjoyable and realistic watch. I occasionally though about running my Pi off solar. But I live in a flat and hardware is not my favourite thing, maybe one […]
Playing around, ChatGPT got me to black and white. I use ImageMagick occasionally, for tasks I repeat a lot (mapgrids for example) I’ll not learn much of it. ChatGPT may speed up my simple needs. convert ravens.jpg -threshold 30% -fill white +opaque black bw.jpg
Read: The Wych Elm by Tana French ★★★☆☆ 📚 Narrator with a bump on the head and confused brain. Murder from the past. The story unwinds & unfolds in a teasing way.
Took a short walk on the braes this morning. Lotos of interesting birds around. #nature
GitHub – chasedooley/mostly-free-resources-for-almost-everyone: A list of mostly free resources for almost anyone. Huge list, main topics: Computer Science and Related; Education; YouTube Educators; Media; Life, Health, and Related; Other Tools and Apps Raspberry “PiMac” I have my mum’s old iMac, tempted as an easy way to get linux onto it. Share on Pixelfed – Jan’s […]
Kilpatrick Walks Some trails layered on a map Is the best place for me when I am grumpy. @tdc #dailycreate #tdc4198 #ds106 https://pi.johnj.info/kilpatrick/ Is the best place for me when I am grumpy.
Read: The High House by Jessie Greengrass ★★★★☆ 📚 Compelling climate crisis novel that focuses on relationships between a very small cast. I like the sparseness the of speech & little moments. Good on our sleepwalking too.
Nostalgia. Recently I’ve seen teacher’s “apps” created with PowerPoint or Keynote I wonder what we could do with HyperTalk in Keynote?
My use of Twitter has reduced massively of late. I still follow the odd link to see content. This is often in an iOS app. These usually open in the app’s ‘own’ browser rather than jump to Safari. This leads to a login page and I give up. 🤷🏻♂️
After not posting to Instagram for over 18 months, I signed up for Threads. So far, a whole bunch of posts from accounts I don’t know stream by quite quickly. Disconcerting. I still dislike the algorithm.
I’ve read this a couple of time, and probably need a couple more. I guess, like other technologies that have entered the classroom, we are very much in the hands of the powerful. We get the technology we are given. Usually at a low cost, but perhaps at a high price? As a side note, […]
Read: Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes ★★★★☆ 📚 Perseus son of Zeus is not too bright, Medusa is an innocent. The Gods self absorbed & fickle. A bit too jokey for me sometimes but the last couple of page are transforming.
I was watching this Golden-ringed Dragonfly as it caught onto a reed which bent under its weight.
Walk up Beinn Chaorach from Glen Fruin yesterday afternoon. Lots of wildflowers & ravens.
School finished for the summer in the pouring rain at 1pm today. By 5 O’clock the sun and a few butterflies were out, including this Meadow Brown. By the Kelvin near the vet school.
Me: how could I display a list of links using the WordPress opml in the body of a page? chat.openai.com: Me:Are you sure there is an opml shortcode? This didn’t work on my site chat.openai.com: I apologize for the confusion. You are correct that there is no built-in OPML shortcode in WordPress. I apologize for […]
Nice walk yesterday morning. Meadow Sweet starting to come out. 8 Ravens flying above edge of braes. Butterflies: Ringlet, Small heath, Meadow Brown. Lots of folk on the road, Braes quiet, quite wet in long grass.
I’ve not posted links for a while, these are some of the things I’ve found interesting in the last couple of weeks. Featured image found with Openverse, attribution copied from the caption. Winding Chain – Triple Square Link with Wooden Spacers, 5½-inch Pitch, Wrought Iron, 1850s-1870s by Photographer: David Thompson is licensed under CC-BY 4.0
Read: Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆ 📚 1920’s London, mad night life, huge cast of unique and surprising characters tangled in a web of crime(s). Very funny, gets so complex there is a lot of tying up of loose ends in the last couple of chapters.
Lovely father’s day walk from Stronachlachar round the west end of Loch Katrine. warm day, but good breeze and not much in the way of hills made for pleasant stroll. lots to see. More photos.
Listened #2 Seawilding – Scotland On the west coast of Scotland, by the shores of Loch Craignish, a community has come together to help restore their marine environment. When deciding on how to put something back, they identified two priority marine features they could do something about.This is a story about carbon capturing seagrass, water […]
We saw a pair of adults dabchicks feeding 3 very young chicks earlier this week. This evening one adult fishing and feeding a chick, another adult, with a chick peeping out from its feathers, on a nest.
We have improved the embedding of thinklink, content on Glow Blogs. I’ve a simple example and more details on the embeds blog. Pasting an embed code now is converted to a shortcode, with any setting included.
A quick test of Jetpack’s AI assistant. I asked it about H5P because I’ve been using and writing a bit about it recently.
A small example of the H5P Find Multiple Hotspots content type in Glow Blogs. I was intrigued how these wee chicks survived given the number of dogs walked along this shore in addition to plenty of gulls & crows who I would expect to enjoy a plover chick dinner. Even the adults are quite […]
Really proud to watch Our Lives – Series 7: My Husband the MMA Fighter. Filmed, Produced & Directed by Christine Johnston, my daughter.
“Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton Warns of the “Existential Threat” of AI | Amanpour and Company – YouTube
That’s a very different threat from many other threats, which also severe.
So they include these things like robots taking away jobs.
In a decent society, that would be great.
It would mean everything got more productive and everyone was better off.
But the danger is that it’ll make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
That’s not AI’s fault.
That’s how we organize society.
Following up on comment and links from Dan Kelleher. I listened to this video. Quite a different take from Professor Bender’s. A different set of warnings and problems. The quote above is not just about the dangers that Geoffrey Hinton discusses, but I think is applicable to many technology problems, In a decent society, that would be great.
Walk around Kilpatrick muir this afternoon. Warm sunny, blue skys, lots of butterflies: small heath; green veined whites; orange tips, orange not identified. Red Kite flying above the moor, 1st I’ve seen here.
A nice walk yesterday. Lots to see. Highlights, green hairstreak butterfly & a pair of red squirrels chasing through the trees.Stank is a strange word.
Read: The Apparition Phase by Will Maclean ★★★★★ 📚
Flawless seventies recreation. Suburban, gothic, ghosts, teenage energy all with a depth of detail. No modern language, attitudes or slip up. Exciting too.
Before I’d even reached the sheep creep under the railway it was a good day. Warblers singing, swallows swooping, a large golden olive dragonfly shone in the sun. A buzzard flew over. The opposite of soul destroying. More notes & photos on the walkmap
Bookmarked Building a Block-Based Microblog by Jan Boddez.
IndieBlocks, which I am using to post this, is an alternative to the Post Kinds plugin that works with the block editor instead of classic.
I am still using mostly using classic on this blog as it seems the right tool for the job. But WordPress’s future seems to be blocks. I like the ui for bookmarks etc in IndieBlogs and guess I can ignore most of the blocks editor features.
I am a bit conflicted as to how switching approaches would work. For example Post Kinds adds an extra taxonomy for different kinds of post, IndieBlocks uses custom post types. I’ve got 7 years of post kinds posts here. I’ve also some styles based on the kinds.
I lean towards taxonomies over custom posts. This probably due to an over enthusiastic use of custom post kinds a few years back.
I think I prefer the incorporation of the link, author & quote into the main entry in IndieBlocks.
Good to have choices I guess 😉
Read: Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks ★★★★☆ 📚
Late 70s London, Bristol & Jamaica, dub reggae, ghosts, police brutality, crime & bad men. Guest appearance from Misty in Roots.
Listened Micro Camp 2023: Miraz Jordan by @miraz from YouTube(16 minutes 9 seconds)
Take the Captain’s Chair of your Micro.Blog with the MarsEdit App for Mac: Time Travel, Replicators, Warp Speed and More. May 20, 2023.
Thanks @miraz.
I huffduffed the audio from YouTube.
This was a great session about MarsEdit. Although I don’t have a micro.blog blog, I participate in the community via WordPress, it was very relevant.
I was particularly interested in the macro buttons and ApplesScript sections.
Moray has posted her Resources for my MarsEdit presentation at Micro Camp 2023
Since dawn chorus day I’ve been noticing bird song more than ever. This has lead to wondering which birds are singing. A recognise a very small number. I’ve tried a couple of apps and my favourite so far is Merlin.
Merlin identifies bird sounds using breakthroughs in machine learning technology to recognize species based on spectrograms—visual representations of sounds
Sound ID.
Rather delightfully you see the names and thumbnails of bird the app recognises. This are hi-lighted each time the bird is heard. Even better you get the same effect playing back the audio. Hopefully this will lead to me being able to recognise a few more bird songs without the app.
How accurate the app is I do not know, but I have seen most of the ones it has identified nearby.
Bookmarked AudioMoth | Open Acoustic Devices.
AudioMoth is a low-cost, full-spectrum acoustic logger, based on the Gecko processor range from Silicon Labs. Just like its namesake the moth, AudioMoth can listen at audible frequencies, well into ultrasonic frequencies. It is capable of recording uncompressed audio to microSD card at rates from 8,000 to 384,000 samples per second and can be converted into a full-spectrum USB microphone.
Looks a bit tricky to actually buy at the moment, but interesting device.
Listened BBC Radio 4 - Word of Mouth, Chatbots from BBC
Professor of computational linguistics Emily M Bender chats all things bot with Michael
BBC Radio 4 – Word of Mouth, Chatbots 1
Like lots of other folk I’ve been reading plenty about Large Language Models, AI & Chatbots and playing with some of the toys.
I really liked Professor Bender’s approach and method. I also found this a very easy listen. My mind has tended to wander off when reading blogs post about AI. Very clear on the “not intelligent” and the risks associated with chatbots trained on large piles of language.
And specifically the things that they’re predicting is what would be a plausible next word given all the preceding words here and then again and then again and again.
…
And so that’s linguistically interesting that once you get to billions of words of text, there’s enough information in there just in the distribution of words to stick with things that are both grammatical and seemingly coherent.
…
So that’s a cool observation and it’s dangerous because we tend to react to grammatical, fluent, coherent, seeming text as authoritative and reliable and valuable.
…
So instead of talking about automatic speech recognition, I prefer to talk about automatic transcription because that describes what we’re using it for and doesn’t attribute any cognition to the system that is doing the task for us.2
- I subscribe to the RSS feed of this BBC radio program as a podcast, pity you can’t find the feed on the webpage. ↩
- Ironically I used Aiko to get the text of the podcast for the quotes: “transcription is powered by OpenAI’s Whisper model running locally on your device” ↩
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Victoria-park-2023-05-07-4-20-39-am-selection.mp3The above is a short selection of a few moments of the stream I broadcast this morning, 10 minutes in total. The segments are each separated by 1 seconds of generated silence. The Whole thing is on the Stream Page. There is a fox barking near the start and a pigeon claps its wings over head near the end.
First, an apology it seems I should have streamed on Saturday. I somehow got mixed up and though it was Sunday. So 4am saw me leave the house and head for the park. Set up and started streaming at about 4:20am.
The birds were singing and there was not much traffic. As well as my phone I’d brought along my wife’s, to listen to the main stream and watch the chat. The Shure MV88 mic I use does not have a place to monitor the audio or listen to other audio on the phone. The borrowed phone worked ok, until listening for over an hour burned through my wife’s data 🙁
Not having noticed my scheduling error, I wondered if I was an hour out and asked in the chat about that. Hannah graciously didn’t mention I was out by a day and asked if I could hold on till 5:45. That I could. I’d could see I was live, but had trouble listening, but read in the chat it sounded ok.
ListeningI had listened now and again the day before and to some of the long running streams. I listened a lot more during the hour or so I was in the park. It was quite strange listening to the local sounds in one ear and England, the Netherlands, France & Barcelona in the other. Next time (and I’d love to do this again) I’d listen more during the whole 24 hours and pay more attention to the chat.
There is a well developed community around soundcamp.
StreamingI suppose I’ve done a fair amount of very casual field recordings over the years. Starting with audioboo, through SLFTalk, #ds106radio and Edutalk. Some of this has been from a computer at conferences & TeachMeets mostly from a computer. The mobile has been pretty casual andI’ve not worried about monitoring anything. Taking my wife’s phone was a lost minute idea, it might be an idea to join more dots.
I’ve used a variety of iOS app for streaming in the past but soundcamp have their own, locuscast. They had some last minute problems with a server which meant a switch to iziCast. Icecast clients for phones come and go and are of variable quality. iziCast seems more professional than many others, not free, I hope it stays around for a while. It can be used as a recorder as well as a icecast streamer.
Some of the other options look inviting, a raspberry pi perhaps. I’ve also got a zoom H4 N mic somewhere which would hook up to my phone and allow monitoring. I should wait till my old lightning port iPhone is replaced in case USB C comes to iPhones before I buy a connector.
Out Early
One of the most interesting things about this was being out so early. We enjoyed walking the park before 8 during lockdown. I usually like to get out early on hillwalks, but this was much earlier. I saw a couple around 5:30 walking their dog and someone was feeding herons about 6 but other than that things were very quiet.
I also spent about an hour and a half in a couple of square metres. Usually if I am outside I am walking. I need to think about sitting still more often. Also worth going further afield. Also worth working a bit on learning some more bird calls. I only recognise a few.
EducationI mostly forget that this blog is supposed to be about teaching & technology. There might be a few clues and ideas that could be imported into the classroom. I’ve alway liked online collaboration between classes. Could do something similar. Bird sounds or even playground sounds across a range of schools might be an interesting broadcast.
BonusAs soon as I stopped streaming a few more birds appeared. A couple of coal tits and a goldcrest were flitting around the bushes behind me. To early for a clear photos but nice to see.
I just updated the twitter category on this blog to be called posse as it is syndicated to twitter & mastodon. I also disabled the twitter cross posting from micro.blog. Micro.blog does a lovely job of cross posting images along with alt tags to mastodon.
@magsamond enjoying skimming your theses.
Desire Lines in Open Space:: An Exploration of the TeachMeet Phenomenon
“Desire Lines” and “Open Spaces” are important concepts.
Joining the #stream for the annual celebration of Dawn Chorus Day. Organized by @soundtent ‘Reveil travels West on live audio feeds from streamers around the world at daybreak.’ I ‘m at
http://locus.creacast.com:9001/GlasgowWest
I’ve been looking for a replacement for Trails .
There are quite a lot of GPX apps out there so it has been interesting looking at them.
Many ‘hiking’ apps are concerned with giving you routes or posting routes you take their own or other services. These apps tend to be quite fully featured and often need an account on an online service. Trying a few out gave me a chance to think of what I wanted.
- Easy recording of a trail
- Trail shown live on a map, preferably OpenStreeMap.
- Quick and simple transfer of gpx track to my mac so that I can use it to tag photos, etc.
- Not completely killing the battery of my aging iPhone over a day.
Other features are either a bonus (some stats) or a complication (online services).
I’ve settled, for now at least, on HikeTracker . The app has been designed by a hiker, with the main aim of accuracy & simplicity. It fulfils all of my requirements.
The app is set up to work well “out of the box” for a hiker or walker – just tap “Start” and go!
It has worked well for me in a couple of tests, geotagging some rather blurry photos and giving me a track to add to the map.
I was happy to pay for trails and would be happy to pay for this free app too.
Featured image: Screenshots of HikeTracker, map on the left, stats on the right.
Ardinning this afternoon, first cuckoo I’ve heard this year and the first nuthatch I’ve ever seen. Very blurry photo:
Replied to #tdc4124 #ds106 Is today the day it all breaks? by Reverend (daily.ds106.us)
If Twitter switch off the old version of its API, then some of the functionality of the Daily Create will break today. See Cogdog’s blog for an explanation. This sucks. It really sucks. As Alan says, life will go on. But just in case it doesn’t, make something, DS106 style, that expresses how sucky this… Read more »
Today’s #DS106 challange is worth more than a tweet. #tdc4124 #ds106 Is today the day it all breaks? | The DS106 Daily Create
If Twitter switch off the old version of its API, then some of the functionality of the Daily Create will break today. See Cogdog’s blog for an explanation.
This sucks. It really sucks. As Alan says, life will go on. But just in case it doesn’t, make something, DS106 style, that expresses how sucky this really is.
The twitter API has, over the years, enabled a lot of wonderful things. In my opinion none more so that the #DS106 #DailyCreate. This provides simple daily creative prompts, but more importantly it pulls responses together onto its WordPress Home. I imagine Alan especially feels this pain. He has tirelessly kept this up and running and helped other use the technology elsewhere (the Daily Stillness is one I love).
There may be a silver lining, the slim chance that there is an increase in open, shares and self owned streams, open protocols and interop may increase, or even flourish. Mastodon is growing, I hope RSS does too.
Featured image, my own.
Likes Forest Bass: Dispatches from a cabin in the woods | Caught by the River by Mark Mattock.
Nice dub metaphor. from an undisclosed location, which sounds idilic.
Read: The Young Accomplice by Benjamin Wood ★★★★☆ 📚
Wonderful queasy tension. Siblings, out of Borstal in the early 1950s bring all sorts of baggage to farm training centre for young humane architects.
Liked World Curlew Day (curlewaction.org)
World curlew day What is World Curlew Day? World Curlew Day (April 21st) is a grass-roots initiative which champions the curlew worldwide. Created by Mary Colwell in 2017, the day shines a light on the dangers curlews face as a result of shifting factors both globally and locally. Many of these are factors deeply linked …
World Curlew Day Read More »
Likes World Curlew Day.
I did not know this, followed a link from the Caught by the river newsletter to Curlew Country. Both sites have activities and resources for schools. I wish I’d seen it earlier as it would have fitted nicely with Earth Day/John Muir day which we celebrated today in school.
Replied to Sarah Honeychurch (@nomadwarmachine@social.ds106.us) (ds106 Social)
@toddconaway @tdc Maybe we need an activity to write a 'to don't' list? #DS106
@nomadwarmachine @toddconaway @tdc #dailycreate #tdc4114 #ds106
This reminded my to restart my taDa.txt file today, an idea borrowed from @sheilmcn
TaDa.txt is file I try to add something to celebrate at the end of the working day. I had forgotten about it for a while, now restarted.
I’ve also got another one where I add one, very short, nature note per day. Managed to do every day this year so far.
Both happier places than a todo list;-)
At the far side of the forth & Clyde Canal. Quite often see foxes sleeping along the canal in the sun.
Read: A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume ★★★★☆ 📚
Depressed young artist in the Irish countryside. Had me completely invested & worrying about the outcome throughout. Many short references to & descriptions of pieces of conceptual art are thought provoking.
I am on the search for a replacement app. One that shows were I am & records a gpx track for a walk. I want to simple AirDrop this track to my mac for geotagging photos and making maps.
I’ve used Trails app since 2009 & love it. Pay my sub every year with delight.
Recently it is crashing a bit. Today it is not on the App store & this note on the forum: App no longer available after update ios 16.3.1.
Suggestions most welcome.
Had a walk along the pipetrack and up Slackdhu this afternoon. Bright & warm. Notes, photos and map: walkmap
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans – Boston Review suggested by John Naughton was an interesting read. Nice featured image too. I followed the attribution link to Flickr and found I’d, in the dim distant past, favoured it.
I took a walk to Ballagan yesterday. always a fascinating place. Ravens & crows swooping and rushing at each other. Quite a few signs of spring.
Notes, photos on the walkmap
Bookmarked What I Mean When I Say Critical AI Literacy by Maha Bali.
Readings/videos on inequality/oppression created, exacerbated, or reproduced by AI/algorithms:
Interesting thoughts & a collection of links to look through. Holiday reading.
In reply to So long, Twitter API, and thanks for all the fish by Ryan Barrett.
Well, it’s come to this. Twitter is burning, a billionaire owes money, an API will soon get lobotomized, so Bridgy‘s Twitter support will die within the month.
A lot of the reactions on my blog come from Twitter thanks to Bridgy. A marvellous service. I really disliked it when Twitter swallowed comments, then Bridgy came to the rescue. Thanks so much for all of Bridgy.
Likes IndieBlocks 0.6.2 Released by Jan.
I’ve been keeping half an eye on this. I’m not fully onboard with blocks yet and don’t really know how this will fit with the post kinds plug-in I usually use.
The Blackthorn at the Kilpatrick muir id a little behind others I’ve seen recently from the road.
We did see out first tortoiseshell butterfly and quite a few bees today. A couple of larks singing on the muir too.
Purple Mountain Saxifrage, first time I’ve seen this, flowering just above 2000ft in the shelter of a bolder. Hardy wee flower.
Ollie Brae’s tweet, leads to Game Over for Maths A-level — Conrad Wolfram
The combination of ChatGPT with its Wolfram plug-in just scored 96% in a UK Maths A-level paper, the exam taken at the end of school, as a crucial metric for university entrance. (That compares to 43% for ChatGPT alone).
Wrong conclusion: ban it. Right conclusion: change what humans are learning so they step up a level, and don’t compete with what AIs do well.
Wolfram goes on to explain that an overhaul of the math curriculum is long overdue, and quotes himself from 3 years ago:
Today’s ecosystem of education doesn’t easily support such subject change. From assessments tied to today’s subjects, to too short a time horizon, to evidence-led innovation rather than innovation-led evidence, there’s everything to prevent core subject change and seemingly nothing to promote it. Except, eventually, after much disarray, cold, hard failure.
My hi-light. Seeing “evidence-led innovation” as part of the problem was interesting.
Listened 246 – Building your own social network with the Friends plugin by Nathan Wrigley from wpbuilds.com
So you love Facebook and you hate Facebook, you love Twitter and you hate Twitter. You love… You get the idea! If you’re anything like me you have at times questioned how much time you’ve spent trawling through social media. You may even be worried about how much data they’ve been gathering about you, or perhaps thinking about whether or not we’re even able to escape from it all. On the podcast today we’ve got Alex Kirk, and he certainly has been thinking about all of this. So much so in fact that he’s built a social network plugin for WordPress. Listen to the podcast to find out all about it…
So you love Facebook and you hate Facebook, you love Twitter and you hate Twitter. You love… You get the idea! If you’re anything like me you have at times questioned how much time you’ve spent trawling through social media. You may even be worried about how much data they’ve been gathering about you, or perhaps thinking about whether or not we’re even able to escape from it all. On the podcast today we’ve got Alex Kirk, and he certainly has been thinking about all of this. So much so in fact that he’s built a social network plugin for WordPress. Listen to the podcast to find out all about it…
Really interesting podcast discussing the Friends WordPress plugin with its author Alex Kirk. A lot of interesting features, including a built in RSS reader and a WordPress to WordPress social network.
I had a couple of thoughts, I wonder if this would work on a WordPress multi-site like Glow Blogs?
I also wondered if importing all these posts you were reading would bloat your own blog? This was answered in the podcast, you can set the number of posts kept or the length of time to keep them.
Alex did mention the IndieWeb, so I am wondering if there is much integration, with webmentions or bookmarking for example.
Obviously to use the social part you need friends using the plugin, but I think I’ll install it somewhere to see how it works as an RSS reader when i have a mo.
Good Call Flickr: the announcement threw me, I’d no idea how to implement a user agent in my amateur use of the Flickr API or if I’d need to. As a tinker I’ve really enjoyed using the Flickr API over the years. The fact it has never changed has been great for me.
Read: April in Spain by John Banville ★★★★☆ 📚
Slowly building up a few different threads that come together quickly. A lot of fun from the characters as opposed to the plot.
Enjoyed listening to the latest episode of Really Specific Stories: Gaby Santiago. @gaby chatting to @martinfeld.
This is becoming on of my favourite podcasts. I think I prefer listening to people talk about listening to tech podcast than actually listening to tech podcasts.
Bookmarked UK National Parks Sound Map (petestollery.com)
We are putting together a Google Earth Web sound map for UK National Parks. We are a group of researchers, passionate about listening and about how we, as human beings, relate to the sounds around us in our daily lives.
Another interesting audio project. Reminds me of the UK SoundMap from a few years ago. The map itself seems to be lost:( I blogged about that UK Sound Map and joined in with a few boos.
I loved the way the UK Sound Map project allowed anyone to join in by recording an Audioboo and tagging it.
The National Parks Sound Map is a bit more manual, you upload a sound and fill in a form. I just added one to see how it works.
I’ve now got a page for my stream for the REVEIL 2023 Dawn Chorus Day weekend set up on soundtent here
I noted REVEIL 24+1 hour daybreak broadcast a few weeks ago. I’ve now set up an account for Locus Sonus’s sound map. I tested the Locuscast app on my phone and it working. I’ve not up a stream page on soundtent yet, but there is time before 5:00am on the 5th of May.
Listened Michael Camilleri from Really Specific Stories
Join host and podcast studies researcher Martin Feld as he delves into stories of tech-podcast production and fandom, featuring creators and their listeners.
Listened: Really Specific Stories – Michael Camilleri, I continue to really enjoy this podcast. A podcast about podcasting and podcast listening.
Wonderfully it discusses the culture of podcasting rather than the type of mic you need. Michael‘s episode was very interesting his views on podcasting and the web had me nodding a lot.
I grabbed this wee snippet when I arrived in the car park at school the other day using Castro’s ability to snip a bit from a podcast (I am presuming such a short extract, for review, breaks no copyright).
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Michael-Camilleri-Really-Specific-Stories-57m42s-58m21s_46006.m4aThere is a lot more to listen too, the idea of blogging, podcasting and writing html as a something done by ordinary folk, and the idea that the openness of the format invite participation certainly rings true for me.
There is quite a lot of blogging about blogging, maybe we need more podcasting about listening to podcasts & podcasting.
Bookmarked a tweet by Robert Macmillan (Twitter)
Here’s a dropbox link to a folder with Keynote, PowerPoint and PDF versions of my @researchEDScot1 talk ‘Clean Up Your Mess’ #rEdAberdeen https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vdj5prwpqyxor2a/AAAHmWgCWeU6zUOfHAYaJfura?dl=0
Please share!
Bookmarking this to remind myself to go through this presentation regularly.
Here’s a dropbox link to a folder with Keynote, PowerPoint and PDF versions of my @researchEDScot1 talk ‘Clean Up Your Mess’ #rEdAberdeen https://t.co/2bFRLXM4OL
Please share!
— Robert Macmillan (@robfmac) November 20, 2022
Dropbox link in case twitter implodes!
Liked Cool Oak Diary #14 by Ben Watt (caughtbytheriver.net)
This is about more than just removing a tyre from a riverbank, or a crisp packet from a hedgerow. We know now that global plastic waste will double by 2050. We need a paradigm shift in how we deal with it.
Read: Hindsight: In Search of Lost Wilderness by Jenna Watt ★★★★☆ 📚
Stimulating investigation deer in Scotland, rewilding, green lairds and the like. Fitted well with the recent episode of Scotland outdoors. Female ecologists & stalkers. A first stalk by the author.
After bookmarking the Locus Sonus Stream Project the other day I saw a link to Soundcamp 2023 on Caught by the River. This lead to:
REVEIL 10 – Call | AnnounceSaturday 6 to Sunday 7 May 2023
On Dawn Chorus Day, Reveil will make its tenth annual day-long loop of earth, travelling west on live audio feeds sent in by streamers around sunrise.
from: REVEIL 24+1 hour daybreak broadcast — Call | Announce
There seems to be several ways to join in, Raspberry Pis, computers and mobiles. Looks like icecast technology.
I would be quite interested in joining in. Dawn is around 5:30am in Glasgow on the 6th April.
Some of the locations on the Locus Sonus Stream Project make nice background noise, birds and burns from around the world.
Bookmarked Locus Sonus Stream Project (locusonus.org)
Locus Sonus Stream Project offers a worldwide network of "open mikes" that permanently stream local soundscapes to a dedicated server. The resulting live audio is used in a large variety of artistic projects. The microphones are installed and maintained by volunteer participants.
Looks really interesting.
Back to Glen Finlas again. Hoped to see Snow Buntings, I did fleetingly. Went round same circuit as Sunday in reverse.
Notes & photos on map: walkmap
Walk round Ardinning this afternoon. Quite still, some sun 7°C, almost spring like. Goldeneye and wigeon on the loch, a few roe and the croak of a raven.
First walk in a while over a couple of Glen Finlas hills. Even though we cut it short I was pretty puffed on the up! Saw my first snow bunting in the clouds.
Notes & photos: walkmap
I’ve just transitioned to a mac mini. My 2016 MacBook pro was bulging horribly. Battery knackered. The keyboard was duff from the start. I don’t need a pro machine nor a portable one now so a mini seemed a good choice. Basic model but with 1TB disk & 16 mb ram.
Replied to a tweet by ds106 Daily Create (Twitter)
For today's #dailycreate ... #tdc4040 #ds106 Make a rainbow https://ift.tt/s5H6kIn
tdc4040 #ds106
A ds106 Rainbow
Looking Up at Two Oaks, I took the class down to the woods today to gather words, sketch and play a game or two. The pupils really took to sitting quietly drawing the bare trees.
Had a short walk around lunchtime at the edge of the Kilpatrick Braes. Blue Skies! Buzzards, Kestrel, Bullfinches & a Raven.
Liked One More Reason #ChatGPT Seems Like a Sweetheart by Maha Bali (blog.mahabali.me)
This ChatGPT thing, quite apart from all the other AI writing tools, is disturbingly addictive and… likeable? I had tried before with you.com/chat to make it say mean and biased things, but it wouldn’t. And this surprised me because if it trained on internet data, the internet is full of stuff like that, right? So…
An interesting experience with chatGPT.
Who trained you to be so sensitive and polite and politically correct?
I couldn’t be angry with it, because it was such a sweetheart about not giving me what I wanted.
I’ve been testing and using FeedLand for a while now. Today Dave posted the roadmap
- FeedLand is a feed management system for individuals and groups. So far it’s only been offered as a free service on the web.
and
- Here’s the big news: The new FeedLand server software will be available as open source, so anyone will be able to run a FeedLand instance. It’s a Node.js application. Uses MySQL. You may want to hook up an S3 bucket for special features like RSS feeds for Likes. At first email sending will be via Amazon SES, the method I currently use. It will be possible to plug in new drivers to use other email services.
As someone who has been pretty excited about RSS for years this sounds great.
Wayback when ScotEduBlogs was a ruby app1, I had this wild idea that a visitor could create a subset of the feeds on the site, save that and view the subset in some way. I think an instance of FeedLand could do just that.
Apart from the unknown of how running FeedLand would work2 I think there are a couple of barriers:
- The lack of blogs about Scottish education, maybe twitter problems will help that).
- The lack of knowledge about RSS. Andrew McLaughlin’s post Education needs free, safe spaces for creation, collaboration and discussion. and TES Article How a return to blogs and wikis could benefit teachers | Tes gives hope there.
Most online discussion of education and even news from schools has been on twitter. I’ve always felt uneasy about that. More than ever now 3. Maybe 2023 will see a RSSurgance;-)
- Created by Robert Jones with the help of Pete Liddle and cheered on by myself.↩
- I am hoping to be able to test than soon. ↩
- For example: Twitter team responsible for removing child exploitation on site cut in half since Musk takeover, report claims and No more Tweetbot or Twitterrific on Twitter | Mashable ↩
Replied to Why I Haven’t Embraced WordPress Blocks by David Shanske (david.shanske.com)
As someone who maintains a very specific set of WordPress plugins, over the last few years, I’ve been asked why I have not updated them to the block editor. The simplest reason is I don’t use the block editor, and I write the plugins for me, not for a commercial purpose, so while I keep saying I...
But it adds the microformats for different types of Indieweb posts outside of the traditional content block using WordPress filters. That is something I never particularly liked, and wouldn’t mind replacing with something integrated into content.
I’ve been using Post Kinds and other indie web plugins on this blog for a good few year now. Very grateful for the work in developing and maintaining them. I don’t yet use the Block editor very often on this blog either.
Adding the microformats, I presume links & quotes, to the main contents of the post would be great. I am guessing it would future proof the content of the classic editor goes away.
Too Slow. New Year’s Day, I was driving home & stopped by the police. I was going too slow. Asked why, I say, I was listening to a poem on the radio. Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert, it was worth slowing down for.
Read: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka ★★★★★ 📚
Great read. I know almost nothing about Sri Lanka. Surprisingly touching given the setting, the after life, a world of ghosts & demons many the result of political killings.
Replied to Someone is right on the internet (cogdogblog.com)
the force of human presence in keeping this web going for 16 years speaks against the total gloom and doom of AI taking over the world. All the hype seems to again look over all he human creativity alive and more than well right there in the long tail of the internet.
How lovely, thanks Alan.
Read: Swimming to Ithaca by Simon Mawer ★★★★☆ 📚
Historian discovers his mother’s past in Cyprus during the 50s, intrigue, secrets and spies. I rather disliked the main character but it didn’t stop me enjoying book.
I’ve read a bit about ChatGPT use in education, there is a lot about 1
I’ve been kicking the tyres of ChatGPT a little. Even on the surface it is quite interesting.
I have tried a couple of things that might be useful. One is to get some JavaScript functions for a little fun. It did what I wanted. The other was perhaps more pertinent to teaching.
I wanted to knock out a couple of simple cloze procedures, making up sentences is one of the more tedious tasks so I though I’d give ChatGPT a shot. I asked:
**Me**: can you give me sentences for 10 year old using each of these words featfeetmailmaleleakleekmeatmeet**ChatGPT**: Sure! Here are some sentences using each of these words:"I am so proud of my little sister's feat of climbing to the top of the jungle gym all by herself!""I can't believe how big my feet have gotten since I was a baby.""I need to go to the post office to mail this letter to my pen pal in France.""My uncle is a male doctor.""There's a small leak in the roof that needs to be fixed before it starts raining.""I love adding sliced leek to my salads for a little extra flavor.""I can't wait to have a barbecue and cook some juicy meat on the grill.""I have to go meet my friend at the library in an hour."
So I needed to fix the spelling of flavor and asked, with typo, as in the screenshot, for another sentence for male. I got a list. I needed to adjust the one I chose to make the lion lazy too.
It was easy enough to paste that into an H5P Fill in the Blanks Content and get a cloze in Glow Blogs.
Diversion to Other Geeky TerritoryThe Fill in the missing blanks content in H5P takes text with the words you want to be blank surrounded by asterisks. Since I’d copied the sentences into a text editor to replace the quotations, I set the document format to markdown, selected the words and pressed ⌘-i.
I then wondered if I could get ChatGPT to add the asterisks for me, so I asked: with an asterisk before and after each word. This it did, but as it typed then it seems that ChatGPT uses markdown, so as it typed the closing astrisk the enclosed word became italic. So back TextMate for me.
- ChatGPT & Education – Google Slides and Some ill-formed thoughts about AI, robot colleagues, resistance, refusal. are both interesting. ↩
Replied to a tweet by ds106 Daily Create (Twitter)
For today's #dailycreate ... #tdc4007 #ds106 Spiraling Out Of Control https://ift.tt/AyOPBCD
tdc4007 #ds106 I asked ChatGPT how to draw a spiral and took it from there:
tdc4007
Liked a tweet by Matt Mullenweg (Twitter)
Can we all agree that giant per-post image headers look terrible on most blogs? It’s been a curse of default WP themes past few years, too. We need it to be easier to have posts without image headers and even without titles.
Mostly, sometime the image is the thing, it is carefully created or curated. I do dislike them more on web pages I’ve gone to to look for information.
Quoted RSS is federation (Scripting News)
RSS is a federated network. You don't need a license to be in the RSS network.
After using mastodon for a while I still feel happiest with RSS.
Replied to ‘modern photo / video gallery and lightbox’ (javascript) by joe jenett (the.dailywebthing.com)
nanogallery2 (github)[insertrealname]
Hi Joe,
This is nice, it only took a couple of minutes to get a basic page set up here: John’s nanogallery using my flickr photos.
Update: there is a visual builder.
According to my Books page, I’ve read 46 books this year. I started adding star ratings as tags so can give a list of 5 star books (weight by my enjoyment ) using the lovely display posts plugin.
- Read seven steeples 21/11/2022
- Read: Rose Nicolson by Andrew Greig 09/10/2022
- Read: The Glass Hotel 11/09/2022
- Read: Small Things Like These 09/09/2022
- Read: The family Chao 07/08/2022
- Read: Islands of Abandonment 04/07/2022
- Read: Blank Pages 22/04/2022
- Read: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead 06/02/2022
- Read: O Caledonia 07/01/2022
Read: The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys ★★★★☆ 📚
Hot sweaty, feverish & confusing, unreliable narrators & characters, pickled by heat and rum.
A very interesting read: How a return to blogs and wikis could benefit teachers | Tes
Unlike social media, these older content-creation tools did not restrict the length of contributions or steal your attention every waking moment with incessant dopamine-releasing notifications. Instead, they allowed developing thoughts to be published, ideas shared and shaped, links made to like-minded thinkers, and documents to be written collaboratively – the very values cherished by both luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment and the creator of the web.
And
What was missing in 2010 was any sort of directory: a working record 1 of the many flowering blogs, themes and ideas. A “ScotsEdu” wiki would quickly establish this, editable by all, allowing for information to be updated quickly and providing a map for educators, linking ideas, papers and research.
In short, it would provide a one-stop shop to support an ongoing national discussion about Scottish education.
I saw this article via twitter after a link was tweeted by Ollie Bray. Ironically Ollie was once a very prolific Scottish educational blogger.
A working recordA working record is not missing, but perhaps un-noticed. ScotEduBlogs has a record of posts going back to 2006!
ScotEduBlogs goes back to a Wiki started by Ewan McIntosh on Wikispaces. When the list of blogs became a bit to long to follow by clicking links, we 2 created ScotEduBlogs . At first it consisted of a aggregation of posts from across Scotland and a supporting Wiki. Over the years it has shrunk to an aggregation site now maintained, in a fairly lax fashion, by myself.
The site started aggregating class & teacher blogs. After the move to WordPress I reduced it to ‘professional’ blogs. It had gained some higher education blogs, but the frequency of posts has dropped.
The article made me visit the backend of SEB for the first time in a while. Much to my embarrassment I found a request to join by the TES article’s author Andrew McLaughlin. I’ve now added his blog. The form on the site has failed to send me an email. I added a link to email me requests, which should do as a stopgap.
I took a moment to improve the menus on mobile. I also set up a mastodon account for SEB so that people can get the link to new activity in their mastodon account in the same way as they could follow the twitter account. Given the current twitter woes, I hope the mastodon account will be useful.
It might be time for a revival of ScotEduBlogs. I would be delighted to add more sites. I’d also be interested in any ideas for improving the site
Personally I rarely visit the SEB site, I subscribe to its RSS Feed in my feed reader. This gives me all the news from all the blogs in SEB without having to subscribe to them all individually.
- My emphasis ↩
- The original site was created by Robert Jones along with Pete Liddle, I just made suggestions. ↩
I’ve just set up a mastodon account for ScotEduBlogs at @scotedublogs@mastodon.scot.
I’ve used IFTT following this post: How to Post to Mastodon From Anything Using IFTTT – K²R
If it has worked this post should flow through to mastodon after it appears on SEB.
My mind is on ScotEdublogs after reading:How a return to blogs and wikis could benefit teachers | Tes. A great post I hope to return to presently.
Another year, another collection of photos
As usual made with few tweaks of this gist. The featured image made with a similar script. Got a tag for these things now: flickr year, need to find a few posts. I’ve been doing these since 2014 time flies!
The idea#FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns | Chris Aldrich
Feed ReadersAnother sort of RSS reader is a Podcatcher. Podcast listening apps depend on RSS. My favourite on my phone, I listen to podcasts while commuting, is Castro.
Folk to FollowRSS Feeds this week:
- Eat This Podcast RSS Feed Great podcast on food in all of its aspects.
- Backlisted RSS Feed. Quite in depth reviews and discussions of books, one per episode. Took me a while to figure out the feed for this one. Almost grumpy enough to skip it.
- Scotland Outdoors RSS Feed A lot of BBC radio content is available via RSS. They push their own sounds app, but the RSS is on the page.
- Is It Rolling, Bob? Talking Dylan RSS Feed. Found at random, enjoyed that way too.
- Really Specific Stories. narratives of tech-podcast fandom, featuring producers and their listeners. Fascinating RSS Feed
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FeedReaderFriday 1
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FeedReaderFriday 2
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FeedReaderFriday 3
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FeedReaderFriday 4
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FeedReaderFriday 5
Read: A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore ★★★★☆ 📚
Broken characters crumble with the house. Lyrical countryside. The young ones grow wild. Relationships are awkward or too intense. The first world war appears out of nowhere.
Bookmarked GitHub - AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS: A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc. (GitHub)
A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc. - GitHub - AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS
Extensive! hat tip: Joe
The idea#FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns | Chris Aldrich
Folk to FollowChris Aldrich, who started #FeedReaderFriday has a great feed, but I also follow his hypothes.is stream Feed. I don’t use hypothes.is myself, and the number of items in the feed would be overwhelming if you tried to keep up, but it contains many nuggets that you would not find elsewhere.
Not a person but tinywords: haiku & other small poems has an RSS Feed
Feed Reader TipIgnore the unread count. Some feed readers show you the number of unread items. forget FOMO and ignore items, feeds and the whole thing if you have something else to do.
This post is part of a series with a wee bit about readers and a couple of suggestions of feeds to follow.
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FeedReaderFriday 1
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FeedReaderFriday 2
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FeedReaderFriday 3
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FeedReaderFriday 4
Liked Re-launched instagram-atom by Ryan Barrett (snarfed.org)
Re-launched instagram-atom, my side project that lets you read your Instagram feed in any feed reader, with new browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Feel free to try it out, feedback is welcome!
I’ve not posted to Instagram for over a year. I don’t miss the adverts or bonkers timeline. I do miss photos from family & folks I don’t see elsewhere online. This sorts that out via my RSS reader.
Liked Making the IndieWeb more approachable by Tracy Durnell (tracydurnell.com)
Replied to IndieWebCamp Popup: How to Make the IndieWeb More Approachable (events.indieweb.org)The IndieWeb community welcomes anyone who is interested in expressing themselves on a personal website, regardless of technical experience. In this meetup, we will be asking the question “how can we ma...
The IndieWeb is build on the kindness and enthusiasm of many clever folk doing tricky things. Simple it is not. I imagine this chimes with none technical or time poor folk. It does with me. There is a mention of micro.blog as the smoothest path to indieWeb happiness.
On authenticity, assessment and aspiration Sometimes I think that authentic tasks are based on the tastes and whims of the educated elite. Is a literary podcast really authentic for a 15-year-old? Are hipster food trucks really the most efficient way to learn about business? As Doug Lemov once said, it’s our role to find the […]
Listened: Scotland Outdoors, The Complexities of Deer Management in Scotland from BBCI've walked some of the ground discussed. The interaction of deer, trees & the habitat is more complex than I thought. Really interesting half hour.
The idea #FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns | Chris Aldrich Feed Readers Just after I discover RSS in the “flowering” of theScotEduBlogs community I got interested in aggregating RSS and creating specialised readers. Back in around 2006 I was blogging some ideas which lead to Robert Jones & Pete Liddle creating […]
Read: The High Window by Raymond Chandler ★★★★☆ 📚 One of a few comfort re-reads. Always enjoy Chandler despite some dated attitudes. This one has the usual slick chat, lots of smoking and a tangled web.
“Moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones”
If you are happy using a few #IndieWeb plugins and setting up indieauth & micropub you could use quill: https://quill.p3k.io
The idea #FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns | Chris Aldrich Back around 2005 I was learning to blog with my class and exploring blogging. I was on a train with Ewan Mcintosh going to a conference or training event. Ewan was using NetNewWire and showed me how he used it. I’d […]
@jimgroom Posting from my blog to social.ds106.us is working fine. Now replying with the indieblocks plugin & brid.gy.
Listened to this episode of the ATP pocdcast as they were talking about mastodon. They talked about the problems of scaling, large instances and what would happen when celebrities arrive. Personally I don’t want to follow celebrities or even slightly famous people who I can’t engage with. I love the idea of small instances of […]
@jimgroom is awesome, not a word I use often. Solved my brid.gy to social.ds106.us problem today in this thread: https://social.ds106.us/@johnjohnston/109399129466178554 This post starts on my blog and hopefully gets to mastodon via brid.gy
I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to new features when an OS updates nowadays. But the other day I discovered the “photo shuffle” Lock Screen feature on my phone. Now every time I unlock my phone I see another random image. I picked nature as the subject. I am not sure what algorithm […]
Read seven steeples by Sara Baume ★★★★★ 📚 October mornings peeled the night cloud back to its subcutaneous lilac tissue. The leaves earned their name by leaving the trees. A couple drop out and slowly dissolve into nature. Dreamy poetic prose.
@dogtraxAt least 30 years ago I saw a book in a secondhand shop, in Bank Street, beautifully produced, a translation of a French poet who had lived in Japan.Some haiku like poems & some one word ones. I can’t recall any but I remember placement on the page was important.I couldn’t afford the book. evanescing […]
The idea I’ll share people’s sites I follow and enjoy. I’ll also suggest some feed readers to try out along with other related resources. I’ll use the tag/hashtag #FeedReaderFriday to encourage the website to website conversation. If you’re interested in the experiment, do come and join me and help to spread the word. #FeedReaderFriday: A […]
I’ve been listening to Ollie Bray’s The Future of Digital in Scottish Education. I say listening rather than watching as I huffduffed the video to a mp3 file so that I could hear to it on my commute 1. Ollie was looking for feedback, so I though I’d jot down some notes. The quotes are […]
This is a really nice idea Chris. I am currently trying out FeedLand Dave Winer’s new project. This is a feed collector & reader. You can also see what other people are subscribing to.
I POSSE and cross post a fair bit, but I often just do it manually. Helps with both formatting & alt-text on images. But this like I am relying on brid.gy. It works well for Twitter, so this is a mastodon test.
Interesting dilemma, Thinking about moving to #ds106 https://social.ds106.us. It seems moving mastodon servers is not that difficult. I think you lose old posts but since I’ve POSSED some from my blog it is not a problem. Alternatively the ActivityPub WordPress plugin turns your blog into a member of the fediverse. The is attractive, but I am not sure how much understanding & work is needed. Or I could stay on mastodon.social
Read: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier ★★★★☆ Oh what fun. I was caught up. Great ambiguous ending.
I do use Twitter for school work, just not comfortably I prefer to post to the class blog & syndicate to twitter. The latest twitter crisis reinforces this. I’ve never really liked the idea of Twitter or any other service being the official or main channel of schools (or government services). Schools should not be […]
Remember that your blog is yours! Your posts can contain exactly what you want them to: a sentence of text or a novel-length essay; photos and videos; audio; links and bookmarks. What you want to share is entirely up to you. Ben Werdmuller.
Read: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin ★★★☆☆ 📚 I found the Cultural Revolution section interesting, the detective predictable, the physics and harder sci-fi lost me. I did finish it though.
The common digital “square” should be the entire web, with a diverse set of platforms. There should be common APIs but many communities with their own rules, goals, and business models. Concentrating too much power in only a couple social media companies is what created the mess we’re in. The way out is more platforms, […]
The Village of Banton, where I teach, celebrates Halloween on the Friday before the 31. Which is nice ’cause you can have a Friday party. We had one yesterday afternoon, in the morning we did some halloween related work. When I sat down at my desk yesterday morning I had a quick look at twitter. […]
took an idea from @SSERCDigital added some pumpkin from @MrsBintheLc added in some radio control and had fun with out @microbit_edu micro:bits @NLDigitalSchool @DigiLearnScot Halloween Micro:bit fun pic.twitter.com/UNpJ5wmvP2 — Banton Primary (@Banton_Pr) October 28, 2022
Feedland went public today. I’ve been lucky enough to have been testing it and following its development for the last few weeks. Feedland is a lot of things, all to do with RSS feeds. First it is a place to gather and organise feeds. Second it can be a place to read these feeds. Third […]
Read: Autumn by Ali Smith ★★★★☆ 📚 Partly a lovely story about the relationship between a girl who becomes a young woman and an old man who gets older. Dreams, time, reputation. I am sure much went over my head but I loved this.
Hi Aaron, Thanks for this link, your pull quote is perfect. As a recovering gif masochists it really struck a chord. I never aimed for perfection just some strange self imposted notion around file size. I blame #DS106 for my may years of gif-addiction. I don’t know if I’ll every break completely free, yesterday an […]
My heart is full. Yesterday one of the loves of my life got married. @cmdjohnston & @MTImmonsMusic organised the perfect day for themselves & their guests.
Thanks for the love Joe, Just when I think I’ll get rid of the sidebar. They do seem to have gone out of fashion. I guess I’ll keep mine till they come back in😉 Ds106, was/is a wonderful course on ‘digital storytelling’ that has run in several universities but allows anyone to join in. A […]
Well this is fun. The Feature image on this post is shrunk & compressed. Via Joe Jennet
Via Chris Aldrich’s hypothesis, looks like a lot of fun (especially for folk who like brackets).
Listened to & enjoyed Alan’s 2015 talk. He compares WordPress and its approachability, flexibility and extendability with HyperCard. As always interesting & provocative (in the best way). Also HyperCard!
WE have been adding some accessibility features to Glow Blogs so I was interested to listen to this podcast. It went further than just web accessibility to discuss accessibility in the WordPress project as a whole, touching on progress & ‘politics’. Takeaways: the visitor experience with straightforward WordPress and standard themes is good. The backend, working […]
Heather has written extensively on her blog about the UK Online safety bill discussed here. Interesting indeed. Good Glaswegian joke & ends with passionate encouragement of the open web. Very much enjoyed this as I ease back into podcast listening while commuting.
Back to School Tomorrow, summer redux 49 Blog posts 48 Tweets 150 photos to flickr 0 photos to instagram 8 books read 5 Walks mapped compare with last year
Hi Brad, This is very interesting. Good news about IndieWeb plug-ins. Two concerns, has ClassicPress the legs for a long run and will plug-ins, like the IndieWeb ones keep working on ClassicPress if they evolve with WordPress?
Read: The Terracotta dog, by Andrea Camilleri ★★★☆☆ 📚 Another Montalbano, easy read, and 99p. The food is the best part. I might read a more recent one to see how things develop and call it quits with this series for a while.
I had a warm short walk around the Kilpatrick braes this afternoon. Quite a few butterflies about including this Small Copper.
Went to Kelvingrove Bandstand to see King Creosote perform “From Scotland with Love” alongside the archive footage. Perfect weather. Lovely night, such an impressive mix. Thanks to @cmdjohnston & @MTImmonsMusic for taking me along.
“When converting medium-resolution photographs (approx 1600px – 2500px on the long edge), WebP files are often larger than the JPEG equivalent,” WordPress developer Mark Howells-Mead commented on the main ticket for WebP work. And from the comments: This plugin will disable WebP generation by default. No settings, just a filter for those who can’t do […]
I've just read "On Reshaping: Tooling WordPress with nothing other than it’s URLs" by @cogdog. This has given me some thoughts...
This sounds like a really good idea. I need to do some reorganisation here at some point so will keep it in mind.
Read: The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang ★★★★★ 📚 Really loved this engaging & exciting book. Set in the Midwest in a family run Chinese restaurant using The Brothers Karamazov as a template in a brilliant way. Food to die for, familial murder, racism & the American dream.
Meadow Brown on Thyme, Barassie beach on Friday. A lot of butterflies in the grass between beach & golf course.
When we talk about “the algorithm,” we might be conflating recommender systems with online surveillance, monopolization, and the digital platforms’ takeover of all of our leisure time—in other words, with the entire extractive technology industry of the twenty-first century. Bucher told me that the idea of the algorithm is “a proxy for technology, and people’s […]
Got out yesterday and walked round the Glen Douglas trio of hills again. Map, photos and notes: Large Red Damsel Fly Black legs are the clue to identify this one.
The main issue here is that there it is no longer possible to remove the tracking part of the URL, as Facebook merged it with part of the required web address. Removing the entire construct after the ? would open the main Facebook page of Ghacks Technology News, but it won’t open the linked post. […]
It has been a few years since I walked to The Whangie, it got to busy for me as lockdown eased. Glad daughter took me today. Lots of flora, a few birds & a nice lizard on the carpark wall. More on Flickr.
Hi Joe, Another trio of fascinating links. podviaznikov.com took me to montaigne.io which the site is made with. Montaigne is a simple tool that allows you to publish any type of website from Apple Notes , the docs are not yet complete but I certainly want to keep an eye on. Thanks!
Liked: Scratch is a big deal | Bryan Braun – Frontend Developer Interesting take on Scratch by a Developer & parent. This recent growth has caused Scratch to break into the Tiobe index’s top 20 most popular programming languages. At the time of this post (July 2022) it ranks 21st, above Typescript, Rust, Julia, and […]
I like Flickr’s style: we want to get photos and video into and out of the system in as many ways as we can: from the web, from mobile devices, from the users’ home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their content. And we want to be able to push them […]
Small Tortoiseshell: Meadow Brown Had a short walk by Jaw Reservoir, yesterday. Quite a few butterflies about. These posed. A lot of ringlets, a few whites and a red admiral did not oblige.
Hi Chris, you would think WordPress could do this. I installed slippy on a test blog. As far as a quick look showed it would not be useful for a public slip box. There is no published url that I could easily find. The repeated slips appear in the editor.
I was interested to read How to Reverse an Animated GIF convert water-forward.gif -coalesce -reverse -quiet -layers OptimizePlus -loop 0 water-reversed.gif So gave it a quick try. The result wa fine, but my 228kb gif was 1.1 MB in reverse. So I had a wee look art the gifsicle man page and ended up after a […]
Yesterday I walked up to Loch Oss. As the weather cleared I went on to Ben Oss. Photos, map & notes:
Yesterday I saw this wee one struggling in the grass just as drizzle stopped and the sun came out. I carefully lifted it up held it in the sunlight and it flew off. A Dark Green Fritillary I think.
This is a wonderful post Ben, thanks you. It speaks, to me as a primary teacher, to more than just EdTech and startUps. The big internet beasts have some claws in education and seem to be working towards what you call the rat-maze simulation of intimacy. Governments seem bent on datafication. Technology can be part […]
How I spent some time today. Water rockets in the rain. The Biggies spent some time this morning building rockets, we gave them a test in the rain this afternoon. Great Camera Work Hollie! The slo-mo voices in the class sound strange! pic.twitter.com/IiXBLzXkKd — Banton Primary (@Banton_Pr) June 28, 2022
Bright blowy day. Ringlet Butterfly or two (saw my first ringlet of year yesterday), a lone swift about the cairn. Lots of common spotted-orchids.
Read: Rizzio by Denise Mina, ★★★★☆ short account of the murder. Not too much in the way of backstory, but lots of detail & characters. Fits very well with the painting by Sir William Allan. Featured image: Out of Copyright, National Galleries of Scotland.
Listened Podcast Episode: Wordle and the Web We Need from Electronic Frontier Foundation Where is the internet we were promised? It feels like we’re dominated by megalithic, siloed platforms where users have little or no say over how their data is used and little recourse if they disagree, where direct interaction with users is seen […]
A few weeks ago I noted that videogrep had an update. I then played about a bit, including this supercut of Casablanca. Instead of looking for words or phrases I used the bits with [music] in the subtitles. I had a couple of sticky points in the process. One where I had aliased an old […]
Brian, that is very cool. Pasting an example markdown from github into the editor looks like a good way to figure it out.
Today’s poem was written for #WorldBeeDay. It’s called ‘The Last Bee’. pic.twitter.com/6WG2O9HhiD — Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) May 20, 2022 I’ll be taking this one to school. Nice to see the whole poem in the Alt tag too.
Are you looking for an introduction to Glow WordPress Blogs? In this webinar @DigiLearnScot are joined by Breadalbane Academy with lots of tips on how to access and use Glow Blogs and how they are being used in the classroom! https://t.co/vlKQLOrh1T — Glow Scot (@GlowScot) June 1, 2022 Guide to getting started with #GlowBlogs. Input […]
This Miniature Sculpture Court was pretty much hidden under a sycamore in the woodlands trust place at Overtoun. I only found it following the dry stane dyke, trying to spot a lizard. Very neatly made.
Why your ability to repair a tractor could also be a matter of life and death John Naughton covers John Deere tractors. I’ve talked about this to the odd young farmers in my class as a reason to learn about tech. In the future you’ll need to hack your tractor.
Another walk at Glen Finlas, round the loop this time. Notes, map and photos Blue skies, midges and some wildlife.
A walk around Ardinning this afternoon, bright, sunny and a bit of a breeze. Saw Common blue damselflies (as far as I can figure), and a couple of distant dragonflies. First for me this year.
Hi Jim, Someone would notice & care;-) I log on to the club once every year or so. Just fixed a couple of http references to https. I still wonder if the tilde environment would make a good place to run a ds106 course. It is also a good tinkering place.
I’ve podcasted both for fun and as an learning experience for my pupils. This rings true.
The Biggies had a bit of fun thinking about what that would do if they were good or bad rulers. Making graphics with layers, transparency, copyright free images, clip art an their own photos. Good Ruler – Bad Ruler https://t.co/uxmOXAbphR pic.twitter.com/ghtx9LJzW7 — Banton Primary (@Banton_Pr) June 1, 2022
Took a wee walk from Dawsholm park to the the vet school. Some Gossanders, a dipper or two and a couple of squawking parakeets in addition to this heron.
I occasionally use Word Cloud generators for school use, for example a header on a blog post. Each time I just search and try a couple until I find one that is free, doesn’t need a sign-up and does what I want. I’ve also occasionally used iPad apps, but never found one I like enough […]
A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan ★★★☆☆ 📚 one to re-read when I am reading in larger chunks. Fragmented tales across time and characters had me a mite confused.
Had a walk round Ardinning this afternoon. Blowy, sun came out at the end bringing with it butterflies & bees. Few more on Flickr.
Looking forward to playing with this update, had fun with it a few (7 gulp) years ago. via waxy.
I don’t really pay attention to tiktok, but this is something I would not have expected. via John Naughton’s Memex
Look Up in Photos is pretty cool. I’ve been a fan of Pl@ntNet for a while. I still think I prefer Pl@ntNet’s community feel & openness but this looks like it will be useful too.
Garscube Estate Bridge, has a wee walk this afternoon. Saw a kingfisher bullet under the bridge and a few minutes later two thrill up the river. Bluebells, wild garlic, garlic muster & stitchwort. Hawthorn in full blossom. Overcast occasional rain drops & sunbeams.
A couple of roe in the reeds. Earlier we saw a mallard lead a large brood across the road.
The music lives on – Apple iPod touch will be available while supplies last I feel quite sad about this. I don’t think the iPod every got the traction it deserved in the classroom. Back in the late 2000s I had a click wheel iPod in my class. It was a great device for recording […]
Read: The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami ★★☆☆☆ 📚 Simple, slow and quiet tale, told rather flatly. Left me feeling slightly depressed.
Working on the help for Glow Blogs. This is spread over several sites. Keeping inter links between them all takes time. Now sharing a H5P column to do this, update once & it goes to all the other sites.
A nice walk around Ardinning Wildlife reserve on Sunday morn, very quiet. Cuckoos, curlews & other singing & calling. Images: Ardinning Loch, caterpillar, wood anemone, bluebells, dandelion & a green veined white.
This is a lovely essay on the IndieWeb. Too many quotable sentences: Venture capital backed corporate social media has cleverly inserted themselves between us and our interactions with each other.
My On this Day page leads me to think about webmentions. I’ve also been listening to Daniel Jalkut on the Automators podcast which reminds me of MarsEdit. Mar’s edit has custom formatting macros so I am testing one that add the u-in-reply-to class to links: Webmention test. Hopefully this is the right way to format […]
Over the last few years I’ve had quite a bit of fun with micro:bits. Given I’ve been using the same ones all that time they were pretty good value. It is great to see them getting a bit more traction in Scottish schools. We are to get some more free ones: Scottish schools to receive […]
Replied to Triple Entry Blogging | Read Write Collect by Aaron Davis (Read Write Collect)
Here’s a super rough proof of concept Replit tiny library.
https://collect.readwriterespond.com/triple-entry-blogging/
Interesting, the rather challanging hypothes.is comments were interesting too.
Ever since I updated my home Mac to Monterey, OneDrive has been a bit flaky. I updated the app and it has been syncing. But I could not open the app itself or click on it in the menu bar. Attempting to do so grave me a beach ball of doom. Restarting, etc had no effect.
To day my Mac at work, an older iMac with an older system presented me with the message, “The application “OneDrive.app” is not open anymore”. This persisted through a couple of force quotes, resetting OneDrive and restarting. Eventually installing a new version from the App Store and resetting allowed me to set it up again. The syncing has changed so that by default items are kept in the cloud and downloaded on the fly.
On getting home I decided to try and sort out my home Mac too. This was already running the most recent version. Resetting, rebooting several times did not work. Finally I deleted the app using CleanMyMac, to get rid of any stray bits, and reinstalled from the App Store. This then let me go through the setup process again, logging on, enabling extensions, choosing the same folder and all the rest.
I’ve set my mail school work folder to be always downloaded and left the rest in the cloud, I’ll see how this works.
The reset process seems pretty bonkers for a modern application. Opening the application package, navigating to a folder and running a command file!
Hopefully I’ve now got OneDrive sorted for a while, an maybe these notes will help someone else. I do find OneDrive an important time saving device that lets me work from home fairly seamlessly, when it works. I am lucky in that I’ve got a Mac at work, though I worry about it lasting to my retirement.
The application “OneDrive.app” is not open anymore.
Not the most welcome of messages on arriving at school this morn. Especially when the app will not open. After trying the obvious, installed the new version. OneDrive processing 1000s of changes. Not what I need.
Had a nice walk this morn, full of bird song, flora and cloud.
Notes, photos and map: walkmap
By the Finlas Reservoir this morning, lots of cuckoos calling.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/cuckoo-and-others-2022-05-01-11.04.09-64.mp3
Read: French Braid by Anne Tyler ★★★★☆ 📚
Family story, nothing dramatic but quietly insightful. Personalities and behaviour bounce through generations.
Replied to Neural Replay by wiobyrne (digitallyliterate.net)
rationale also needs to be expanded to suggest that It’s likely that non-reading adults will raise non-reading children
yup. My daughter was brought up pre smart phone. She now encourages me to read by lending me books:-)
In Pome today:
At the Aesthetics Meeting
We invented shape after shape,
color moving to and fro;
then outside where the plain world lives
it began to snow.
William Stafford (1962)
Which took me via Wikipedia, to the dimly remembered Traveling through the Dark, some Tai Chi to land on Stone, paper, scissors.
All resonated for different reasons.
Twitter Edits You
Twitter is using its embedded javascript to edit other people‘s sites.
There seems to be a fix: GitHub – markjaquith/stabletweet. I wonder if someone will make a WordPress plug-in?
Replied to a tweet by Sheila MacNeill (Twitter)
a really need for nuanced and civilised debates around what open platforms should and could be, the dangers of “free speech”, the need for ethics - you know all the things white, male billionaires regularly do. . . https://twitter.com/guardiantech/status/1518821183310860292
The microblogging book by @mantonsblog is full of both technical and ethical info:
https://book.micro.blog
http://micro.blog is IMO a great model of smallish communities & solving a lot of social problems. It syndicates hosted & external sites.
Liked Art Bits from HyperCard (The Somnolescent Archives)
700+ crunchy graphics circa 1988 incoming
Someone has archived the Art Bits from HyperCard
This stack is fantastic for showing off just how much Apple could do with two colors.
Slowly, painfully, torturously, methodically—I’ve clipped out over 700 of these * things and stuck them on this page at their original size for your use and enjoyment. The entire thing is less than 300kb, after all the PNGs are optimized.
Went for a walk round Ardinning this morning. Lots of birds singing, including the first cuckoo I’ve heard this year. Bluebells starting to appear.
Had a nice walk around some of the Campsies yesterday. Quite a contrast between the flora & fauna of the pipetrack at the start and the bare hills. Map, pictures and notes:
walkmap
Read: Blank Pages and Other Stories – Bernard MacLaverty ★★★★★ 📚
Quite spare stories, filled with details. Mostly around loss, grief or difficult lives.
Liked What’s not to like about a big sloppy sub! (simply.jenett.org)
Made with Dance Jim Dance
What indeed. I like to see silly things I’ve made used.
Well I am quite excited. There is a new plugin in Glow Blogs, H5P. This is quite different from anything else in blogs.
H5P is a system for creating interactive HTML5 content. It can work inside several types of publishing platforms including WordPress.
The range of content types that you can create with H5P is pretty wide. Some are ways of presenting material, accordions, image galleries. Others are learning activities, quizzes, multi-choice questions, word searches and crosswords. More sophisticated types include interactive video. Videos can be paused by viewers to respond to questions and quizzes and 360 tours. Responses to quizzes, cloze procedures etc are gathered from logged on users.
You can combine these content types , or display them on a blog in different ways.
I’ve spent a bit of time making some simple examples for Glow Blogs which has allowed me to start to think about how best to use these.
I’ve also started to build up a small bank of resources for spelling for my class: igh example. So far I am only scratching the surface.
I’ve always enjoyed making online resources for my classes to use. but these can take a lot of time and can be difficult to make presentable or present. The H5P plug-in solves many of these problems and are made “inside” the blog.
Having them on a blog allows resources to be quite easily organised. The Display Posts plug-in or using the make theme helps. Post listing in Gutenberg will be useful too.
Here are a couple of examples embedded from Glow Blogs.
A 360 tour:
and a fill in the missing words exercise.
Liked Contra Chrome (contrachrome.com)
In Contra Chrome, Leah carefully charts this road and its terrain in a funny and easily accessible way. In webcomic form, she documents how over the last decade, Google’s browser has become a threat to user privacy and the democratic process itself.
Contra Chrome is a pretty amazing pice of work from any angle.
The fair use of Scott McCloud‘s Google-commissioned Chrome comic from 2008 is a nice touch.
Had a mooch around Ballagan Glen. Quite spectacular waterfall, behind the trees.
Spring underway, primrose, coltsfoot, dog violets, wood sorrel, wood anemones, barren strawberries and more coming through. walkmap
Liked A Web Renaissance by Anil Dash (Anil Dash)
Thanks to the mistrust of big tech, the creation of better tools for developers, and the weird and wonderful creativity of ordinary people, we’re seeing an incredibly unlikely comeback: the web is thriving again.
If you had to pick the unexpected breakout consumer tech hit of 2022, you could make a pretty strong case for Wordle. In a matter of weeks, the popular word game went from obscurity to ubiquity, grabbing
Quoted Scripting News: Thursday, March 17, 2022 (Scripting News)
“Listen where ever you get your podcasts” == the sound of victory in the battle to keep the podcastosphere from being dominated by evil tech companies.
Read: The employees: a workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn ★★★★☆ 📚
Quite unclassifiable, science fiction, elliptical, mysterious and compelling. I found Lea Guldditte Hestelund at Overgaden, the art exibit the book is ‘based’ on, helpful.
https://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Starlings-Geese.mp3 Listening to & loving the starlings chatting & chattering in the playground this morning when some geese flew over. Not a good recording, spoilt by an aircraft but it still amazes me I can just grab this.
Bookmarked Lea Guldditte Hestelund at Overgaden – Art Viewer (artviewer.org)
Exhibition title: Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present
With a new total installation, Danish artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund explores and develops the possibilities and limitations of the sculpture as well as the body, in a near-future narrative.
In her artistic work, Lea Guldditte Hestelund is fascinated by the history, narratives and potentials of materials, and how these can be released and processed – whether by cutting into marble, or by shaping and transforming her own body.
I am currently reading The Employees by Olga Ravn which is a response to this exhibition.
Despite the drizzle spring seems to have arrived in the Park.
The frogs were making a racket in the wee pond, this albino stood out.
One of the best $10 I’ve ever spent was on the micro.blog kickstarter. For my money I was pledged:
PDF and ePub versions of the book, plus early access to Micro.blog. You can reserve your Micro.blog username even before the book is finished.
My username is johnjohnston on micro.blog and it has been a big part of my online life since April 2017
This week I got an email from kickstarter. The draft of the Indie Microblogging book is available online at book.micro.blog.
I’ve started dipping into the book rather than reading it through. Being beautifully organised online makes this easy.
The book is lot more comprehensive than I expected. Everything I’ve read so far has delighted me. It includes, history, different platforms, interviews with lots of interesting folk. There is also technical information about microformats and other indieweb technologies. This looks like being very readable and useful.
Manton’s personal way of telling the story makes it easy to read and digest.
A couple of quotes, that might not capture the range and depth of the text but resonated very strongly with me:
Toward decentralization · Indie Microblogging
We want smaller platforms again as was common in the height of Web 2.0. Back then it was more like a fabric of web tools, where one app might build on Flickr’s API, or another app might plug in missing features in early versions of Twitter like search or photo hosting. But with indie microblogging we want to go further, even more decentralized, where platforms fade away and all we have are our own blogs, woven together as a new foundation for the social web.
Part 2: Foundation · Indie Microblogging
There weren’t enough blogs back in 2002, and there aren’t enough now. I have no doubt that some of the blogs created today will be important in the years ahead, maybe contributing to a debate on politics, or showcasing new writing or art, or serving as an archive that reflects today’s culture.
Manton asks for feedback, I’ve not spotted anything I think could be improves so far, my only feedback would be lovely stuff!
In classic primary school book reviews a question is often, who else would like this book? If you are interested in any aspect of social media, blogging or online life you will find something of interest. If you are uneasy about Facebook algorithms, or you dislike the politicians and government announcing and pronouncing on twitter, this is for you.
Replied to https://twitter.com/ds106dc/status/1499710262068137984?s=20&t=kuIsDx_PMxvH8xvgoqZA_g by ds106 Daily Create (Twitter)
For today's TDC... #tdc3704 #ds106 Apocalypse [Now] Animated https://dlvr.it/SL40DL
ds106 snake not to good on mobile.
tdc3704 I could say I was hypnotised by the beauty of the Apocalypse [Now] Animated & that is why this is a day late, but it just took me a long time. The #ds106 snake rides the wave of borrowed code, till the end of time or the pi’s SD card gives up.
The most positive piece of news. All power to Jack Monroe for drawing attention to a terrible situation & getting it fixed.
Just found this wee guy on a shelf. New battery & it works. Mounts on Mac too via usb. Bought in 2005. Some old #TeachMeet recordings. I’ve still to find out the button presses that make it record. Back in 2005 I noted “Interface is pretty poor compared to an iPod”.
Bookmarked Images from HTML, CSS, and Shortcuts - All this (leancrew.com)
The important thing I’ve learned here has nothing to do with Wordle or WordleBot. It’s that I can use Shortcuts to make an image out any HTML/CSS. As long as I can stuff it into a data URL, I can make an image from it. Could be very useful.
I don’t use shortcuts all that much, but this looks interesting.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead ★★★★★ 📚
Great book, story of fictional woman aviator who circles the globe, embedded in family history & film of her life. Covering a lot of ground, in all senses, it pretty much all fits together.
Along the canal, A goosander, hazel catkins & a boat. Weather sleet, hail and breezy! Thanks to @vanessa for the catkin prompt which got me over the door.
My blog was born on 5th February 2005, which makes it 17 years old today. I continue to find blogging valuable, both the process and the concept. I also read old posts most days which may well be the best thing about it.
Replied to To Umm or Not To Umm, That is the Audio Editing Question (cogdogblog.com)
the use if “umm” conversationally as a filler, to keep the flow going to signal you have not completed the thought your brain is sending to your mouth
Hi Alan,
Thanks for this.
One thing I liked when I did Radio Edutalk was by doing the show live I felt no pressure to edit the archives, beyond a bit of levelling and trimming my technical problems at the start of a nicecast broadcast.
One of the values, to me, of listening to a podcast is the extra information, often emotional, that is carried by the voice. This research linked might support that premiss.
As podcasting gets a lot more professional, one of the downsides might be the loss of the unedited voice.
Liked https://mxb.dev/blog/make-free-stuff/ (mxb.dev)
Despite what web3 claims, it’s possible to “own” your content without a proof of it on the blockchain (see: IndieWeb). It’s also possible to create things just for the sake of putting them out into the world.
Read Searching for Kid-Friendly Searching | flower.codes
I set about trying to find a kid-friendly search engine that enabled exploration, while still protecting her from the toxicity of the greater modern web.
And, guess what?
I failed.
And,
If my kids want to search for dinosaurs, they should be presented with educational and otherwise appropriate websites to help them learn about dinosaurs; not a full page of ads for dinosaurs before they see the actual search results
I do not see much discussion of this from within education, I wonder why not?