“Perhaps ironically Really Simple Syndication has become anything but simple. Really. 💥”
One More Thing ...
I listen to my podcasts via Castro .. and every now and then revisit the occasional alternative in the hope of getting a missing piece of functionality.
Overcast just delivered.
Or is it that I just found the functionality in Overcast?
What I wanted?
When listening to a podcast just be able to add it to your playlist of choice … rather than leaving the podcast, going to the playlist to add a podcast, scrolling down the list to find the podcast and then adding it.
Overcast is now where I am listening.
Now - because we are never satisfied are we?
If only the smart lists were really smart and let me create a playlist purely of (say) any and all PBS and BBC podcasts for example? NO manual selection needed.
Notes Reminding Us About Notes
Two short posts that arrived almost back to back in the multivarious reading apps that seem to be multiplying on my iPad.
The first came from Derek Silvers about why we should write plain text files.
The ‘shouldness’of that instruction cant be more emphasised. All that he says I do know, but it’s good to be reminded. But, even then it still doesn’t stop me from writing a lot of stuff in a couple of the most proprietary formats out there .. Apple’s ‘Pages’ and ‘Keynote’.
YES Keynote … it isn’t just for presentations, I use it to create simple graphics and structured workbooks.
The second was Note-taking became a full-time job, so I stopped
Last year out of nowhere, I became aware and interested in Obsidian. I learnt about Zeitelkasten. I discovered that Obsidian was just the latest application that promised to be my salvation.
I haven’t stopped using it - but boy did that post resonate!
Important to 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic
"If you rely only on tor to protect yourself, you’re going to get owned and people like me are going to laugh at you."
"The modern purpose of TK is that there are few words in English that contain these two letters juxtaposed in this way, so it’s super easy to use Word to search your manuscript.
“And did you know that America entered the war against Germany only after Hitler declared war on the United States? He did so right after Pearl Harbor, in solidarity with Japan.”
Yes. Yes I did.
The Social Media Challenge
“Most posts in social media are automatic replies, bots, spammers, time wasters, people in their own bubbles with a microphone and THEIR amp turned up to 11, but no headphones - so they don’t see the occasional REAL post.
Repeat after me.
Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing interface. Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing interface. Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing interface. Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing ….
🚧 It's A Pattern
In my book ‘For Business Leaders Slapped In The Face By A World They Thought They Knew’, I referenced an organization called 'The Prout Institute'.
It came to mind as I watched this relatively unwatched (in the big scheme of things) video.
Andrew Pancholi is definitely an interesting man.
It's a 2022 video - but predates the invasion of Ukraine, though not the build-up with the result that we have an immediate feedback loop on some aspects of how right or wrong his thinking is. (He seems to be right.)
The talk is only 35 minutes or so of the nearly 1-hour video (the rest is a Q and A) - and touched on many topics including China's penetration into the world that Peter Frankopan - amongst others - wrote about in his 2018 book The New Silk Roads. (The Guardian). An excellent book that if the future of the world is interesting to you, this book should be either on your bookshelf - or (as in my case) in your iPad.
There is part of me that questions the pattern making ‘proofs’. Kind of like the ley lines of England … that are in the canons of ‘lost knowledge’. If you are loose enough with definitions and correlations then yes - everything is going to align.
Still, for all of that, it’s a good 35 minute listen - and it gets harder to say that as each day passes.
“A lot of the current hype around NFTs consists of the belief that the rest of the world will follow the same rules as NFT art. But of course part of the point of art is that it doesn’t follow the same rules as the rest of the world.”
💬 James Grimmelmann
Grimmelmann is a professor at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech - directing the Cornell Tech Research Lab in Applied Law and Technology.
Not just techies …
Just had cause to send this message to someone
“Oh the vagaries of WhatsApp - it truly is an appalling app (thats appalling - and definitely NOT appealing).”
What you need to know about the state of the metaverse today - the problem is that Vox published this on the 19th of this month - so it has now all changed.
Moving from 1Password to iCloud Keychain
… reading and absorbing as 1Password 8 approaches.
Experimenting With Footnotes
🚧 I wanted to write this post as a permanent test of applying ‘footnotes’ on my blog.
Here in the time line it is almost certainly going to look weird if there isn’t a title - but the idea is to improve the reading experience on the site - and then of course explore what it might look like in an RSS feed.
Post Posting
The footnotes aren’t coming through hyperlinked. YET!
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl.
Click On The Arrow To Get Some Context
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl. Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti.
Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti.
Video embed test
Blockquote Test
Normal
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl. Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti.”
💬 Joe Blow
Hitchens Specific
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl. Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti."
Meanwhile ….. why not explore header formats while I am here
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5
Heading 6
Why America Can’t Build Big Things Any More
…// @kaa - saw this and thought of you.
How An AI Became My Code Writing Genie
Read the article on Wired here …. (Paywall)
It’s not yet ready for prime time .. but still ….
So, using Visual Studio Code, I wrote a plain ol’ comment describing the first step I needed done:
write a function that opens a pdf document and returns the text For about four seconds, nothing happened. Then Copilot wrote this: def pdf_to_text(filename): pdf = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(open(filename, “rb”)) text = “” for i in range(pdf.getNumPages()): text += pdf.getPage(i).extractText() return text