Trendio – A Word-Based Stock Exchange

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

I’ve just started playing with Trendio which seems like an interesting website. In the past i’ve played on websites where you’re playing the stockmarket with virtual money and you can see how you’re doing without the risk of bankrupcy usually associated with investment.

I’ve only been using it a few hours now and I have yet to make a profit on the search terms but over a short amount of chance there is a chance that I will make virtual credit.

I’ll come back to this topic once I have more experience of it.

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7000 youtube views

Byrichard

Over the past month I have seen an increase of 7000 views in relation to the videos I have posted on youtube. The two events that helped make this a reality are the Geneva Lake Parade and the Paleo Festival. For the Paleo Festival scantily clad girls were an attractive proposition.

As to the paleo it was taking video I had streamed live on qik and sharing it via a number of video sharing websites of which youtube was one.

To give an idea of the audience peaks we saw over 900 views for the Lake Parade footage and over 1300 views for Manu Chao. That’s a respectable audience.

The question is whether there are any events you would like me to cover (via live streaming from a mobile phone) and whether that would attract a big enough audience.

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I Haven’t Had a Proper Night’s Sleep in 85 Days

Byrichard

Since I left Switzerland after doing some work on the 21st of February I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep for 85 days. That’s a long time.

I wish there was a soundproof chamber into which I could go.

What if I designed and built a soundproof bed? Wouldn’t be that complicated.

From Instagram Archive to PHP Website

From Instagram Archive to PHP Website

Byrichard

Three years ago I stopped using Instagram because I was tired of seeing influencers and adverts rather than by the people I chose to follow. The cherry on the cake, that pushed me to dump Instagram is when they changed the location of the Post button from the left corner to the top right and changed the default from photo to story.


For ten years or more I used instagram and shared photos, and I enjoyed capturing at least an image or two every single day. It’s because Instagram was bought by Facebook that I fell out of love with the site and decided not to use it anymore. The community had been lost, so what good was there in sticking around? 


Instagram to WordPress


In 2020 I played around for two days and I developed a work flow to take my posts json file, and convert it to CSV before importing it to wordpress via a plugin. It worked well, but I never used it. 


The Laravel Concept


For a short time I was thinking of trying to get Laravel to drive the Instagram clone but soon changed my mind, due to the amount of learning it would required. I settled on a simpler, yet practical solution. The PHP Array. I had used PHP arrays for one or two sections of my page, as well as individual pages. It’s simple and intuitive to use, with few complications to debug. 


JSON to PHP array


Recently I saw discussions about how pixelfed made it possible to import the instagram json file to pixelfed and that’s what encouraged me to play with the Instagram json file. This time I tried a different tact. 


The first step was to download the most recent json file and save it locally. Once this was done I converted the json file 


I asked chatGPT for help. I asked it how to convert from json to php array. The answer summarised is “$json = json_encode($array);”


I then asked how I would generate a file:


$json = json_encode($array);

$file = ‘data.json’;

file_put_contents($file, $json);


After this It was a matter of trial and error to read the php array data. My idea was to create a loop that would cycle through each post individually and display the image, as well as the related data. Usually I would achieve this by trial and error, as I have done, in the past, with other projects. 


chatGPT Helps to Access Array Data


By myself I was able to retrieve the URI and display it. I struggled with the timestamp and exif data so I asked chatGPT to help me. It gave me examples of how to get the URI, the iso info, and the title. The arrays contain more info but I extrapolated that from the example chatGPT had provided me with. 


At this point the page was ready to experiment with displaying the content. At first it was just text. I then added the required html to display the image properly and to size it correctly. When that was working properly it was time to add pagination. 


In the past I would have spent time Googling for examples of pagination and selecting one that worked well but this time I asked chatGPT for help. 


It helped me with pagination, except that the pagination was from page one to one thousand six hundred or more. That’s excellent, if you want that, but I didn’t. I wanted the pagination to be paginated, so I asked chat GPT to help with this too. It did. I then noticed that I needed back and forth, so I asked chatGPT for help yet again. 


EXIF volatility


When the site was loading individual images and the relevant information I flicked through the images and noticed that some did not have exif data so I asked chatGPT to write an if else loop that would display exif info if it was available, and ignore it if it wasn’t. This worked well. 


Time Taken


chatGPT is a fantastic tool, when you know what you want, and you understand how to get it to work, but you’re not 100 percent on the code aspect. I had the basic functionality of the json to PHP site functional within an hour to an hour and a half. I then spent hours tidying things up, adding a little functionality here and there. With chatGPT if you know what you want to do but you’re not certain of how to do it, then it shines. 


During this process I asked a question, it gave an answer, when I saw the answer I tweaked my question, until the result was what I wanted. 


Adding CSS


When I was happy with how the site was behaving I changed from displaying three images, to five and then I added styling. For styling you can copy and paste from old projects, or various sources, or you can ask chatGPT to give you a black background with white text and white borders and it will provide you with the code. Within seconds your theme is ready. 


And Finally


I am comfortable with PHP. I have been redesigning my website to run off of PHP rather than html or a CMS and it works well. chatGPT didn’t provide me with the concept or direction. I did that. I thought of the steps and workflow, and got chatGPT to provide me with reminders of how to do things. It’s because I knew what I wanted to do, that I achieved my goal within a short amount of time. This is really a post about how I used prompt engineering to get chatGPT to help me achieve the goal I wanted to reach, within minutes, rather than hours, or days. 


i went from having a big, clunky wordpress blog, to a few lines of php, to do the same thing. I can add functionality with time. For now it shows my instagram photos efficiently.


The Result

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A book on Sleep and Sleep Tracking Apps

Byrichard

Why We Sleep

Sleep is something that we do almost every day and yet explore it only superficially. We either say “I should go to sleep” or “I wish I had slept longer”. Recently I read “Why We Sleep”. It’s an interesting book because it explores the topic in such depth. I learned that birds sleep on power lines and the birds on the right and the left of the group are sleeping with one eye open. Half of their brain is sleeping whilst the other half is awake. Half way through the sleep cycle they hop around and the other eye is opened and that half of the brain takes over. Sleep is a fascinating topic.

Sleep As Android

I have been playing with two apps for over a year now. One of these is Sleep As Android. When I first started using this app it required being placed in the bed to detect when I moved. Over time they developed technology so that it uses “sonar” to detect when we move during the night. Thanks to the “sonar” feature I can keep the phone up to a metre away from me.

I might have tracked up to 576 nights of sleep with this app. With this app I can see the duration, the irregularity, how much of my sleep cycle is deep, how efficient it is and how I rate it. It shows my how bad or good my sleep deficit is and what my chronotype is. According to the app I am a morning lark.

This app gives advice. This app believes that to maximise sleep I should go to sleep at 23:15 and that to maximise deep sleep I should sleep 8hrs 10.

Sleep Cycle

Another app I have played with extensively is Sleep Cycle. I used this app to track my sleep for several hundred nights of which six months was whilst working as an aircraft deicer. This is relevant because I was trying to go to sleep for 1800 and waking for 2am. Of course, I usually went to sleep around 2000 or so. I mention this because if any sleep specialists read this blog I am ready to share the data. Since then I have gone back to sleeping more pleasant hours.

This app provides you with a sleep graph per night, the time you went to bed and got up, sleep quality, time with noise, sleep notes, wake up mood, heart rate, step count and total nights tracked. I have tracked 303 nights of sleep with the app.

When you look at the trends tab you can see sleep quality and you can compare it with entire countries. You can track how regular your “went to bed” graph is, how much time you spent in bed, the time at which you woke up, what factors result in better sleep, decreased sleep, weather effect, air pressure, moon and location. You can also track your heart rate when you wake up. My average is currently 47 bpm, average in Switzerland is 67, Denmark, 65 and Turkey 73. The heart rate measurement comes from shining light through your finger and the phone detecting the change in colour per heartbeat.

Apparently, my best night of sleep is on a Tuesday and it gets progressively worse as the week wears on.

 

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Canyoning and a new camera

Byrichard

On Saturday I went canyoning, or as you Americans would call it Canyoneering and the adventure was fun. You suit up in 30°C heat and walk for fifteen minutes through a mountain path before going down to the river and jumping from pool to pool. The natural cooling effect of the water is welcome. As you go down the river so you get opportunities to jump from a variety of heights, from 7 meters to 11 meters. Land the wrong way and your palms may hurt.

That’s not actually the point of this post. The point of this post is to speak about how much fun it is to spend your time going down a river in such a fun and relaxing manner. The drawback is that most cameras are not waterproof. The Nexus one mobile phone for example would be afraid. You may regret bringing it along.

That’s why I have a new photo camera. It’s the Olympus Stylus Tough 8010. It’s a small drop proof waterproof camera rated to 10 meters below the surface. That means I can jump from 11 meters with it in my clothing and it should survive for me to take pictures of the next people jumping down.

In a little over a week I’ll be playing with this camera during a rafting trip so I’ll upload the pictures at that point, if i don’t end up in the lake before then.

I’ll leave you with a test gallery of pictures taken with the new camera.

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624545521618″]

X-Istential – Podcasts and Where We Find People
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X-Istential – Podcasts and Where We Find People

Byrichard

Yesterday Twitter decided to re-brand as X. X.com redirects to Twitter.com. Within the next few days, weeks, months twitter will change its name and brand, and the URLs will be wrong. All twitter links, all embedded tweets, everything will become dead links. When we look for something on Twitter, we will be redirected to X.


The Podcast Legacy


Every single website, every single CMS, every Static Website, everything, will have to be re-written to point to the new domain name. Plenty of content will not be updated and will be a reminder of the past.


I’m thinking of all the podcast episodes and conversations that speak about Twitter, all the guests that mention their Twitter accounts. All of those “where can we find you?”, “where can we follow you” will turn to nothing. Suddenly mentioning Twitter accounts will be a reminder of the past.


Happy to Have Broken From Twitter


I am happy that I already broke my ties with Twitter, because this change would make me really sad. It’s the end of a culture, it’s the end of an era. It’s the end of an important part of web history. Musk has destroyed an important cultural symbol. “Pour des Prunes”, as the french would say. “For nothing, as the English would say.


Don’t Complain


More than once I have been told not to complain, to filter what I don’t like, and just to accept what I can’t change. Yesterday I was unhappy about a pop up that appeared twice, trying to teach me how to use Mastodon. I expressed my disgust, and was told not to complain. The thing is, I am a heavy social media user, so I am more sensitive to toxic changes, on social networks than most, because I live and breath these networks.


Hashtags


I complain about hashtags because I have seen them destroy conversations on twitter, and undermine communities. If people had listened, Twitter might not have become such a toxic place.


I am happy to see that you can go for toots, before seeing hashtags being used, and that’s great, because the moment hashtags saturate timelines is the moment the community will be dead, and the time to move on will have come.


Kbin


Yesterday I decided to take a break from the Fediverse and went to Kbin but all I saw in the threadiverse were people complaining about Spez and reddit. If those users could, I know that they would return to reddit, because that is their home. They’re expats, refugees. They moved because staying put was no longer possible.


I have been complaining about Twitter since Jaiku was around, but the critical mass were on Twitter so I had no choice. Google + was great, but it was destroyed by Google because they destroy anything that is niche, rather than mass appeal.


Slow to Adapt


It’s interesting that the Web is so slow to adopt to the new social networks. I don’t see that many sites that encourage people to add Mastodon, Kbin, Lemmy or Firefish accounts. They’re sticking with Twitter and Reddit, despite the clear shift by an active part of the social web, from one set of platforms to the next.


Frozen in Time


I was looking at one of my twitter accounts and it has been frozen in time. The last post that was sent from my Wordpress Blog marks the end of Jetpack talking with Twitter. That account is now frozen in history. Until I update a post.


Worth Returning?


I considered returning to Twitter yesterday, because it’s easy to use, smooth and fast compared to fediverse instances. The problem is that every little change Musk makes, to destroy Twitter, is heartbreaking, if you have good memories of the old Twitter.


I left Twitter because I didn’t want ads to be injected every four posts, into my stream. I left Twitter because I don’t want an algorithm to choose what I see, rather than me. I don’t want to be on a site that I consider, is run by a morally bankrupt individual.


And Finally


Twitter has been mentioned in blog posts and podcasts for more than a decade. It has been mentioned in almost every podcast too. By dumping Twitter as a name X is destroying its own legacy. How many people will type x.com rather than Twitter.com? X is not a good brand name. X is just a letter, nothing more. Will people be x-ing? If they’re exing are they crossing? “Are you going to X that later”? X is having an x-istential crisis.

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