Month: October 2022

Weekly Review

October 21, 2022 / Troy / 0 Comments

Breakfast with a Beauty

Rm (who is definitely the beauty here) and I had breakfast at a new local coffee shop. Breakfast was terrific (we both had Eggs Benedict) and the coffee was good. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, one other diner with a dog arrived, which was nice.

I’m reminded just how special and enjoyable these moments are. I’m extremely blessed that I get to spend my life with her. I’m also blessed that we get to have moments like this.

Moodle Cross State

I’m lucky to be part of the Moodle Cross State group. This is a terrific group.

StudentQuiz

I’m working with the wonderful plug-in for Moodle called StudentQuiz. Essentially, the plug-in allows students to create quiz questions. These questions can then be answered by the students (for points). The students can also rank the questions.

MAMLE

The Maine Association of Middle Level Educators held its annual conference this past week and I got to go. It was very refreshing to chat with middle school people and look at things from a middle school learning perspective.

I also had an opportunity to chat with the wonderful Dr. Monte Selby. Surprisingly, he even remembered me from an interview that Shawn and I did with him many years ago. He really did remember me, beyond just being polite. Shawn and I interviewed Dr. Selby back in 2012 at NMSA (National Middle School Association) Annual Conference. It really does feel pretty special when someone of Dr. Selby’s ilk remembers you.

Sync

Keeping things in sync is nearly magical. The ability to do something in one place and have it magically show up in another is terrific. When this works, it is great. It doesn’t always work though. When it doesn’t, it is time to troubleshoot.

Joplin

I love Joplin. I’ve used it for quite a while. However, it seems as though one device got a bit out of sync with the others. My working belief is that one of the encryption passwords is out of sync with the others.

NetNewsWire

I’ve been using NetNewsWire for years and years. It has a long history, but it is an open-source RSS reader. It is by far the best RSS reader around. I know that not many people use RSS, but I love it. I get control over what I want to read. Basically, RSS is like my social media site. It’s also like my own personal newspaper. I get to follow the blogs and postings that I want to follow. I have my feeds sectioned off into categories, and things mostly work great.

Recently, I noticed that reading things on one device wasn’t always syncing with the others. A quick trip to the support forums (done via Slack) and the developer answers the questions. He asks for a file to be shared. Bing, he answers the question with instructions on how to fix the issue. He also notes that an upcoming update will fix this issue.

So, I get better support from an open-source software solution than I do with most products that I pay for.

Logseq

Logseq syncing is still a project for me. It doesn’t seem to sync reliably. I have realized that the sync is only really assured (happens?) when closing the program. This is not the way most syncing works. So, maybe it’s my fault?

I haven’t had time to fully investigate this issue, but I hope to at some point.

Week Note 40

October 3, 2022 / Troy / 0 Comments

Tech as a Utility

I’ve had a few discussions with people who want technology to be “like utilities”. That is, they just want the technology to work. I understand this. I wish it were like this too. Essentially, they want technology to be like the water spigot or the light switch. Flip it on, it works. However, at this point, technology is not there. For starters, we may want different things from technology than other users.

For example, hit that switch and the projector turns on and shows the video that you want. Um, where is that video? Are you wired directly to the projector? Do you want this to work wirelessly?

I probably should have some better examples. But the point really is that we may not all want the same thing to happen when we flip that switch. Thus, we’re going to have to learn to make the technology do what we want.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

So this last week was “Talk Like a Pirate Day”. Sadly, not one of my known peeps was participating.

Heated Seats

Well, this week was the first time this fall that I was thrilled to have heated seats. This is one of those little pleasures that I really enjoy.

Brendan James

We went to see Brendan James at the City Winery in Boston. What a wonderful show. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy seeing singer/songwriters perform their work in a small, intimate venue. Like Ari Hest, Brendan James is a thoughtful, singer/songwriter who can make you think and touch your soul. He played great songs and shared a bunch of wonderful stories.

Brendan James also has new album out (Leap Taken). We bought it, directly from him on the honor system. Grab the CD, scan the Venmo code and send him money.

Rm even got to request a song that he played.

Local Comedy

I also got to go to a local comedy show with a friend. It was an interesting evening. One could definitely tell that different comedians were at different points in their development. Timing and pacing are so very important in comedy.

There was a bit too much focus on crass jokes for me. I’m not really a prude, but I also think that you don’t have to fall only to sexual points to be funny.

However, the company was great. It was nice to get out to see a local show.

Darktable

I’m watching some videos trying to learn how to use Darktable. These are very interesting. I’m hoping to at least get good enough to develop some passable photographs.