frost on a car

Working Towards a Goal

Byrichard
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I am currently working towards a goal and I am struggling. I am struggling to stay focused when I follow online courses because I find that my mind strays. I am also struggling because the topic is so broad that there are hundreds of things you can learn but you need to be focused.

I am also struggling because although many people live in denial about the pandemic it is still thriving. The positivity check, for a disease, to be considered under control is less than five percent. COVID, after five years is still at ten or more percent. This gets in the way of going to conferences, meetups and other networking opportunities.

Out of pandemic I would volunteer for many events for two reasons. The first is that I’m shy, and by volunteering I force myself to go to events. The second reason is price. If you volunteer you pay for the train or parking but nothing else. This is a good way of going to conferences, meeting people, and coming across interesting ideas.

If I felt comfortable with what I am learning at the moment I would spend four or more hours a day on it. I would spend two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon.

Recently my progress keeps stalling because I don’t have the solitude that I need to be at my most productive. I sit down, start to focus and then noise interrupts what I am working on and I stall.

This isn’t an uncommon problem. Usually writers complain about this but I am not a writer.

What I find hard with this situation is that I am a good worker, when I am in contract. The problem is that contracts are hard to find and they end after six to nine months, and finding the next one is a struggle. That’s why I’m working on changing career. That’s why I try to write at least a few lines of code every day. At the moment I am working on being at ease with Laravel and PHP and it’s progressing.

The progress is not as fast as I’d like, because I don’t have as much solitude as I would like to make good progress.

I am close to reaching my goal.

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Slightly Ahead Of Their Comfort Zone

Byrichard

Today I went to film some friends playing a gig by the lakeside in Nyon and it was a great occasion. The sun was shining, the air temperature was good and many people that I had not seen in many years were present.

The shoot involved two cameras. One was at the back as a safety shot whilst I got the fun camera at the front. There was one electric guitar, one acoustic, and one bass. There was also a drum kit and a synthesizer.  The music was good but I forgot my hearing protection so I had a slight ringing by the end of the event… all in a day’s work.

I managed to get the whole concert filmed without getting tired which is great. I’ve been using the camera I used for the past 7 years so it’s normal I’m so comfortable with it. I watched the footage and I’m happy with it. It’s good, a nice variety of shots, switches at the right moment from the key instrument to the next.

Bart Simpson was sitting on the drum kit and then got to dance with a girl who was meant to sing, the only problem is the sound engineer didn’t make her mic loud enough. It’s normal since they didn’t take enough time to prepare everything before having the gig go live.

I’ve captured all the video footage and it’s ready to be compressed and uploaded to Facebook. I’ve actually annoyed them and got a “You recently uploaded a video to Facebook, and it could not be processed because it was too long.” message. hehe, that’s normal for me.

I’m uploading those videos to the video section of my website and they’ll be available on the RSS feed within the next few days. I need to count about two hours of processing per video clip unfortunately. With the Macbookpro I’m waiting for it should be faster.

Today was in some respects a perfect day and I’d like more of them to be like this.

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Andrew Keen, Cynthia Mckinney and Jeff Blankfort

Byrichard

I recently dropped by the Frontline club to listen to what Andrew Keen had to say and his talk was really interesting. There are a few ideas that I found were interesting and I’m still planning on getting something written up about the event.

Last night I met up with Documentally to record an interview before going to Cynthia Mckinney’s talk about confronting the empire. She talked for twenty minutes or so before giving the floor for a Q&A session at which man questions were asked. She got a standing ovation at the end of her presentation. I will find a few interesting elements and post them to this website and others shortly.

Jeff Blankfort was also present at the event highlighting certain moments in his career.

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The Social Media Morning

Byrichard

I went to the Social Media Coffee event this morning and met quite a few of the usual people including Deek, Sizemore, Londonfilmgeek and others. I got to know a few more twitter users a little better and that’s where I stayed for part of the morning.

I’ve been networking a lot over the past few days and I think i need some time to think about all the new options. It’s good to get to these events and talk to people. Quite a few people are interested in twitter and because I’m edging so close to the 15,000 tweet mark they’re quite curious to know my thoughts on the topic. People are actually interested both in what twitter is and how twitter works. Over the months I have acquired a respectable amount of knowledge and people are starting to seek it which is great.

That’s just one aspect of the Social Media cafe I saw today but there is one thing that’s going to change.

If no one objects to it I will begin to record the conversations as they go on and edit a summary to make available both via the London Social Media Cafe website for people to consult and keep up to date. I am in discussion with Jeff Pulver of PulverTV to see about covering the London side of Social media so if you know of any events that may be of interest let me know so that I may organise coverage if it’s relevant.

A Desire to Dump WordPress

A Desire to Dump WordPress

Byrichard

In theory WordPress is a fantastic tool to write a blog, without needing to learn to code. In practice I am tired of WordPress and I have been tired of WordPress ever since they started to use blocks, and ever since I noticed that it uses React. 


React and Meta


I know that PHP was developed by Facebook, and that we use it all the time, but I also know that React was developed by Facebook as it was morphing into Meta, the destroyer of the independent web. Instagram and Whatsapp were destroyed by Facebook, as the monopolist took over those accounts. 


Blocks and ClassicPress


I am not alone to feel this way. I see that there is the ClassicPress community. I tried ClassicPress and it works, but it feels like time could be better spent with a different project, that diverges, and has a more concrete direction than “We don’t like blocks”. I am oversimplifying. I realise it’s more than that. 


Hugo


After playing with Hugo for a week or two I think that this would be a very nice solution. I don’t need comments, and I don’t need a complicated backend for the type of blogging I do. I believe that Hugo would easily fill the gap left behind by WordPress. 


Dormant WordPress


If and when I do make this change I won’t convert my WordPress blog to Hugo. I would simply create a new directory and write blog posts that would go there. I am still not certain of my strategy. For now the goal is to have my static website running Hugo cleanly, before then adding the blogging section. Within the next week I should be ready to make the leap. 


And Finally


Before WordPress I tried plenty of different content management tools and services, as can be seen in the wayback machine.  I am migrating, primarily because I want to try something new. I want to learn how to use a new tool and expand my skills, rather than have them plateau. The reason for the switch can be described in a single word. Curiousity. I am curious to see how I can use this “new” tool, to blog, with a different workflow. 

The NixOS learning Curve

The NixOS learning Curve

Byrichard

While walking and listening to podcasts I kept hearing about NixOS and how good it is for instantiating environments over and over again. What I didn’t hear about, so much, is that there is a steep learning curve, to get started with.

Installing the OS is easy. Download NixOS, flash it to a USB stick, reboot a computer onto the OS on that USB stick and begin installation of the OS.

Changing Desktop Environments

So far, so easy. I chose to install NixOS with XFCE out of curiousity but once I booted into the environment I felt confused. I struggled to find the way to go from using XFCE to Gnome as an environment. Eventually I managed. You mark the old Desktop environment as false, and add the new one as true. You then send the build command. When you reboot you have the option of booting into the old build, or the new one.

Learning How NixOS works

I tried to install Nextcloud and PhotoPrism but that’s where I met resistance. The first challenge is to understand how the configuration.nix file is set out. In the end I managed to get Nextcloud to boot but failed to get MySQL to work properly.

I expected that by switching to NixOS I would find tutorials and it would be easy to transfer from Ubuntu/Debian to NixOS but it isn’t.

The Nix Package manager expects familiarity with NixOS, which I don’t have. I spent time trying and failing, until, after a few searches I found some instructions on how to install Nextcloud on NixOS but I’m only part of the way through the guide.

As I progress I’m running the script, to see that there are no errors before moving onto the next part. I am now on the learning curve, but not very far along.

The Desired Goal

From what I have heard in podcasts the advantage of NixOS is that it makes replicating a setup easy. If, and when, I get Nextcloud and PhotoPrism to work on an instance of NixOS I can easily duplicate the system as many times as I have devices. Instead of installing Nextcloud, and then installing PhotoPrism, CUPS and other apps I can prepare a configuration.nix file and duplicate that system, over and over.

Easy to Recover

With some OSes if you make changes and break something it could take hours to recover. With NixOS you make changes but you don’t have to learn to live with them. You can revert to a version that you liked, or move on to a new version that you prefer. If you experiment and fail with something, you can easily iterate, until it works.

Now I have one build with XFCE, another with Gnome, and a third with VIM and Thunderbird installed. There are more versions where I am trying to get Nextcloud to work. Last night I stopped iterating through experiments because it was time to prepare dinner.

And Finally

Nix Learn exists for those who prefer to take a methodical approach to learning. It has three parts. “Install Nix”, “First Steps with Nix”, and “How Nix Works”, for the more methodically minded learners. I thought documentation would be easier to find, and the OS more intuitive so I tried to sprint before I learned to stand up.

Due to the learning curve I know that I need to devote time to learning to use NixOS properly. I should know most of the concepts from playing with Node, Ruby on Rails and other solutions. It’s a matter of applying that understanding to this context.

I want to spend more time on this in the near future.

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There Are Two Parts To The World Wide Web

Byrichard

the future of the web

the search engine was the king, now it’s social networking.

People had their own home page, now it’s grown to their own website. The blog was grown and grown, replacing webrings

to be developed

For several years the search engine was king. This was the place where everyone went to find content because all the information was so disorganised. Recently though this has changed. The way people use the world wide web has evolved. Whereas people in the past would create just one webpage with a little content people are now creating entire websites.

These websites are not websites  in the sense that they were back in the late nineties, rather they are profiles. It used to be that you’d create a static HTML page that would need to be updated manually through the hot metal code. With CGI-bin and later technologies, the nature of the homepage has changed.

Remember Geocities? It’s been replaced by myspace. Remember the discussion about web portals and yahoo and google were trying to corner the market to get the highest audience. That has changed. Look at Digg, Facebook, Bebo, twitter, Jaiku and Pownce. All of these websites are about one thing. Community. They are only interesting as long as your friends are members; no friends means no way of using it. I was a member of myspace for months before anyone I knew joined and by the time had joined I re-created a profile having forgotten the other profile.

It’s the same with Facebook. I joined it a few months before anyone from my environment started using it but recently everyone has started using Facebook to communicate. Not just this, they’re also uploading their lives to the web. So am I. There are two issues that are interesting to look at. For anyone wanting to do a dissertation why not look at the changing nature of privacy with the rise of the social networking website. When I was studying for my HND privacy was key and release forms were essential. Now it’s as though everyone is a publisher and the nature of privacy has changed. It goes along the lines of “Don’t upload anything too compromising or embarrassing”. Your network of friends can see everything. Friends from your high school days can see all your university friends and vice versa.

This promotes the expansion of social circles. Whereas in the past networks of friends were mutually exclusive due to location they are joined online. Take some videos of when you’re at a party in Switzerland and those in England can see it, and so can their friends if you so choose. It’s a shame you can’t select for only one network to see videos rather than others, for example, only London friends can see the London videos and Switzerland friends can see those. It would make uploading certain videos possible.

Anyway, the web has become personal. Within the last 6 months or so I’ve seen the web go from being about avatars and nicknames to being about real names and real networks. It’s about bringing the offline world online and vice versa. This is where I believe for there to have been a shift in perception of what the web is for. Almost everyone I know and see regularly is now on Facebook. It’s amusing to see how it’s become mainstream.

It’s as though Facebook has become a portal although not in the 1998 sense of the word. There is a new part of the internet. If you imagine the web to be like drupal then imagine that Yahoo and Geocities are the old gateways to the World Wide Web whilst various social networking websites are a new ad important portal with one major difference. These portals aggregate and distribute your content to your friends around the world. You’re no longer going online for research. You’re going online because you’re socialising. It’s replaced, at least partially, socialising in the real world whilst nonetheless providing a great way of sharing content. Both “user-generated” and “interactive” have become keywords in describing what the web is today.

In summary, whereas two or three years ago the Web was somewhere people came to find information for future use the web has evolved into an interactive user-generated medium. As a result of this, I think the world wide web has added another node to what purposes it serves.

Web 1.0: static and hard to interact anonymously vs web 2.0: highly interactive user-generated content where real names are now used, especially in places like Facebook.

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