Month: January 2024 (Page 2 of 2)

Subscriptions

January 8, 2024 / Troy / 2 Comments

I’m feeling a bit lonely. But, maybe I shouldn’t? My subscriptions may have been broken.

I have subscriptions turned on, but I don’t really have anyone who subscribes.

Currently, I use Icegram Express to handle the subscriptions. This allows me to set up subscriptions so that people could get posts, no payment involved and you have to confirm your intention to subscribe. I do have a few people who seem to have filled in the “Subscribe” form, but have not confirmed.

Hm. I did have to set up DKIM and SPF for my domain a while back. It was supposed to be on, but, well, my hosting service messed that one up.

Anyway, I’d sure feel less lonely if a few people subscribed. I don’t do any real tracking, I don’t sell any information, etc. I’d obviously have an email address, but I’ve turned off any tracking (like whether the email was open or not).

There is a form to subscribe right there on the front page.

A black dog with snow on her face, leans on a red ball. There is snow all around.

Weekly Review 2024-01

January 7, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

Seasons

It’s officially winter. Cue Snow from “White Christmas”. We got a bit of snow overnight and are expecting a few more inches during the day. Of course, this makes Hazel’s Herding Ball that much more fun.

Since I was expecting the snow, I took down the outside lights and decorations yesterday.

I also received my first email of the year to buy Portland Sea Dog tickets today. Baseball is coming.

Back to Work

Well, it was back to work today. Lots of my friends still have this week off. I’m good with getting back to work, but I do kind of wonder about having the time off. That would mean foregoing other vacation days or going longer in the summer. Everything is trade-off. Generally a pretty boring day. I cleaned up a bunch of administrative things.

We also reviewed a new Help Desk system. It looks really good, fully robust, and affordable.

New Year’s Day

Spent the day doing some cleaning and a bit of reading. Also went to my eldest daughter’s house to watch a bit of Fry and Laurie. I also spent a bit of time upgrading darktable. I updated to version 4.6.0. Everything seemed fine until I went to import some new pictures. Darktable would then hang upon rejecting the request to access other programs. Apparently, this just took a really long time to set. Upon leaving it run for a while (OK, I admit it, I was working on posting a bug report), the import menu showed up and all is right with the world (or at least darktable). I do have pictures on an external hard drive and probably should switch to a faster drive. Or, maybe I need to convince my wife that I need a new computer :-).

Flu Shot

I got my Flu Shot today (finally). I had to go to my doctor’s office due to insurance. Insurance covers the Flu shot, but only under medical. Most convenient places to get a Flu Shot, bill under prescription insurance. This led to a bit of frustration. However, I am now shot.

Giving Blood

I also gave blood again this week. This is usually a quick and easy process for me. However, this time they had to take two samples for Hemoglobin as the first sample came back slightly low. The second one was fine.

I hopped onto the table, and the needle was inserted. It felt different than usual. Sure enough, the Team Leader was called over. They asked if I was willing to try the other arm. Sure, I said. One of the other technicians stated, “You can’t use the other arm”. The Team Leader simply said, “Yes, we can” (didn’t confront the other tech). The Team Leader inserted the needle and everything was set. So I asked. The Team Lead rolled his eyes and said, if blood hits the bag, we can’t use the other arm. We wouldn’t be sure how much blood was taken. However, the Tech simply had squeezed the blood down to the bag, which is what he was supposed to do. She’s not in charge but likes to think she is.

So, I got a little bit of entertainment with my blood donation.

Posts:

Here is a quick update on other posts this week.

I posted a couple of extra things this week as I can post here and let that be a post on Mastodon. I like this workflow. I retain ownership of the material. I’m not dependent upon any outside provider, but get the social advantages.

CC-BY-NC-SA along with the symbol for each of these.

Attribution

January 6, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

I recently read a wonderful post by Alan Levine – Cogdog on a picture that he had shared that ended up being used in an advertisement. I share almost all of my photos with the CC-BY-NC-SA license.

This breaks down to this:

BY: credit must be given to the creator
NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms

Alan Levine talks about a write up where he shared his images as CC-0 (Public Domain Dedication: essentially making them free for anyone to use in any way). One of his favorite pictures of him and Cori ended up being used in an Instagram advertisement for OMGYES (which is focused on intimacy and pleasure).

He reached out to the company and received a reply from a real person. That person, Rob, sent along an apologetic email. He had the image removed from all ads. Here’s the thing, Rob didn’t have to do that. Alan had shared the image in a way that legally allowed Rob to use the image. (Rob also added a note about Alan’s photography being “stunning”). So there are good people out there. Alan has since changed the licensing of the photo to CC BY-NC-SA.

Since I’m participating in 52Frames this year, I got to thinking about licensing. Specifically, what is NC (noncommerical)? So I did a bit more digging. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a detailed explanation on Creative Commons. Specifically, does an ad count as “commercial”? (To me, it’s obviously a “Yes”, but I’ve been around enough to know that sometimes the law is different than my logic.). After a bit more research, it seems that NC is pretty broad and covers anything that “incorporates a financial transaction”. The Smithsonian has a nice explanation:

Non-commercial use encompasses a wide range of exciting possibilities—including artistic, educational, scholarly, and personal projects that will not be marketed, promoted, or sold. Examples include, but are not limited to, presentations, research, tattoos, sixth-grade science fair projects, tablet backgrounds, free and ad-free apps, GIFs, holiday centerpieces, Halloween costumes, decoupage, inspiration boards, and shower curtains.

Commercial use is any reproduction or purpose that is marketed, promoted, or sold and incorporates a financial transaction. Examples include, but are not limited to, merchandise, books for sale (including textbooks), apps that will be sold or have advertising, periodicals and journals with paid subscriptions, TV programs and commercial films, advertisements, websites that sell images, and cause-related marketing.

So, it seems that choosing the CC-BY-NC-SA license is generally going to be right for me. On some of the photos that I submit, I may keep an All Rights Reserved on, but I’m guessing that will be pretty few.

52 Frames

January 5, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’ve joined the 52 Frames Photo Challenge. The idea is to take a photo a week that fits the challenge. The first week is a selfie. So, I have my assignment for tonight (since this is a weekly challenge, the first submission is due by January 7th).

I’ll link to my submissions each week as well. I’ll have to see if I can commit and keep up with the submissions.

I am looking forward to the challenges though. I enjoy photography and want to get better at it.

Reader’s Theater

January 4, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

The wonderful Shawn McGirr sent along the Reader’s Theater activity he created. The activity has students picking a short story and presenting that story to the class.

Students select their script. All students get a question/discussion page after the performances are done. During rehearsals, students in each skit group design questions in the StudentQuiz activity that restricted to their group until the end and students answer student created questions.
Final exam is a pool of all the questions with a random number from each StudentQuiz activity pulled for the final test.

This is a phenomenal activity. The students get to lead the way. They are creating the questions.

Shawn sent along an example of the activity. However, when I imported the activity and tried to use it, I hit an error screen. Shawn utilized StudentQuiz in Moodle. StudentQuiz is a great plug-in that I’ve used before.

Hm. I thought maybe it was due to the original being created from an older version. So, I tried to create a brand-spanking new activity. Drats, same error message. Or maybe not drats. The issue probably isn’t related to the imported activity. So, off to the forums. It is there that I discovered that there is a known issue with StudentQuiz and Moodle version 4.3. The fix is in the pipeline. Hopefully, by mid-January, it will be available.

I do have another Moodle installation though. That one is running Moodle version 4.1 currently. I was able to import the activity there without issue.

The activity is awesome. Shawn has done a great job. The students take the lead. They get to select a piece to be the expert on. The students get to create the questions. The students get to answer the questions created by their peers. The teacher then gets to utilize those student-created questions to create a unique “final exam” for each student. (The teacher can approve the student-created questions. Then, the teacher essentially says, “give each student 20 questions from this bank of 100”.)

Holidays

January 1, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

It’s back to work time as Holiday break is now over. I got to relax and spend a good bit of time with the family. It was great to see the kids. We got the youngest moved to her new apartment. This is the best apartment she’s had in a while. She actually has plenty of space. She has an upper floor, technically two bedrooms, but one is being used as a dining room.

I rented a trailer for the move. I also took some dressers, a futon, and our old kitchen table to the youngest. She now has things that at least go together.

Spent today (January 1st) doing some cleaning and a bit of reading. Also went to the my eldest daughter’s house to watch a bit of Fry and Laurie. I also spent a bit of time upgrading darktable. I updated to version 4.6.0. Everything seemed fine until I went to import some new pictures. Darktable would then hang upon rejecting the request to access other programs. Apparently, this just took a really long time to set. Upon leaving it run for a while (OK, I admit it, I was working on posting a bug report), the import menu showed up and all is right with the world (or at least darktable). I do have pictures on an external hard drive and probably should switch to a faster drive.

I saw that John Gruber posted Merry about being the luckiest person in the world. I hate to break it to him, but I think that I’ll challenge that one. 😉 (He actually ends with “I hope you are too”, so really, I tip a pint to him and say, “Yes, Yes, I am too”).