Month: February 2024 (Page 1 of 2)

An intentionally blurry picture demonstrating intentional camera movement. The picture appears to have water at the bottom and two ghost like images of a bridge support.

52Frames ICM

February 29, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

The Photo Challenge for this week is intentional camera movement (ICM). I watched the resource on creating an ICM image and the main point seemed to be the wonders of creating an “abstract image”.

I came down to two pictures that I liked for this challenge. I’ve submitted the top picture (and titled it “Ghosted Piers”). The second image was more abstract, but at the end of the day, I liked the first one a bit more.

This was my second choice. This was also taken at Casco Bay.

An abstract photo created using intentional camera movement. — Casco Bay. All rights reserved.

A stand pipe for the fire department. There is a large canister mounted horizontally on two supports. There is pipe coming out the end with a hose connector. Ther are 3 other hose connectors coming from various points on the pipe.

Weekly Review 2024-06

February 28, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

Workcation

Well, I had a “workcation” this past week. The week was filled with painting two rooms. This took a bit longer than expected. I had expected more efficiencies from doing two rooms at once than I actually saw. It certainly didn’t take twice as long, but longer than I had hoped.

Thus, between painting and keeping Hazel active (hey, a dog’s got to play), my week “off” certainly didn’t feel like it.

Hidden Potential

I did finish Adam Grant’s book “Hidden Potential”. It’s a generally quick and easy read. There wasn’t a ton of new information (learning styles, don’t exist, it’s OK to fail, etc) for me, but lots of good reminders. For example, I know that it’s OK to fail, and actually more productive, but I fail to implement that in my life (see what I did there). It was a great reminder for me to get out of my comfortable level and try things, fail at them and work on improving.

This is a good book to share with students and the younger people in your life. (*Nothing wrong with those older reading it too, it’s just like the adage that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.)

A train trussel in front of a brick three story building. A river flows below the trussel.

Weekly Review 2024-05

February 20, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

Vacation Time

With a week off, it’s time for some fun and excitement. That’s right, it’s time to paint! Well, maybe not so much fun and excitement as a lot of work and disruption. However, I know that when it’s done, I’ll be quite happy.

More paint prep. This always takes longer than I think. Plus, doing two rooms seems like a bit more than twice the work. You’d think it would feel a bit less than two as it should be more efficient. This may be just a bit of mental jiu-jitsu. It may really take less time and be more efficient, it just isn’t feeling that way right now.

I bought two gallons of paint (different colors). As is usual, got a paint opening tool, a couple of spouts, and three stir sticks. Wait. Three stir sticks? What is the math that goes on in the head of the person mixing the paint?

Photo Challenge

I was able to submit for the Photo Challenge again this week. I actually had a couple of pictures that I liked.

Website Update

I finally got around to reviewing the theme for this site. I made a change. Originally, I was looking at some themes that are much more picture intensive. However, I realized that I don’t have a ton of highly engaging pictures of me, and no interest in trying to create them, and I prefer to have full blog posts displayed. Most of the visually focused themes default to the blog summary instead of the blog post. I’ve always focused on the whole blog post rather than the summary. In practice, this means that the summaries are less than ideal. I’m working on writing better summaries, but this means that a layout with lots of pictures and summaries didn’t reflect what I wanted.

Rememberances

A couple of “oldies but goodies” came up in some discussions today.

I have used both of these as discussion points. They are highly entertaining and generally useful to spur a discussion.

52Frames Week 7 Photo Challenge

February 18, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

Unexplored is the theme for this week. The bonus challenge was to involve a stranger. My choice this week didn’t include the bonus challenge.

Here was my choice for the submission.

Other Considerations:

Here are the other considerations.

I was going to title this one, “Cupid Missed”. I found a random arrow embedded in a tree.

An arrow in a tree with a train trussel in the background.

While at the park, a group of ducks came swimming up the river. I got a few shots of them, but I like one of a couple of them taking off best.

4 ducks in a river. One is in the air, one is just starting to fly from the river. The other two are swimmingn in the river.

I’m not sure which church this is. I like the steeple, but am less thrilled with the storage container in front. Maybe when the trees fill in this can be a better shot.

A church with a steeple behind some leafless trees. Plus, two evergreen trees close to the church.

Field Trips Spreadsheet

February 13, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

In chatting with an Administrative Assistant, I noted the frustration with them not knowing about Field Trips.

Hey, I thought. I’ve done a Bus Field Trip request form. So, what if I took the data from that and pushed it to a new spreadsheet with just the particular school’s request?

I created a new spreadsheet, wrote a quick QUERY(IMPORTRANGE) formula, and now they are all set. (I used Google Sheets for this.)

The formula goes in cell A2. (I copy and paste the header information, row 1, from the originating sheet).

=QUERY(IMPORTRANGE(“GOOGLE SHEET URL WITH THE DATA“,”TABNAME!A:R”), “SELECT * WHERE Col7=’SCHOOLNAME‘”)
Thus (some data truncated for privacy): =QUERY(IMPORTRANGE(“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1……./edit#gid=1……2″,”D….w!A:R”), “SELECT * WHERE Col7=’Middle School'”)

Here are the import parts:

= to start a formula
QUERY – I want to limit the information that I’m pulling from another sheet
(IMPORTRANGE – brings the data from another spreadsheet
(URL – of the sheet that you are pulling from,
, – breaks for the next section
“Tab Name” – the name of the tab that you are pulling information from (Note the double quote marks here)
!
A:R – the column range of information that you are pulling from that spreadsheet (*Note the closing double quote marks)
,
“SELECT * – this selects ALL (*Note the double quote marks)
WHERE Col7 – the tells the formula which column to match – (7 = Col E)
=
‘Middle School’ (*Note the single quote marks around the EXACT text that you want to match)
” – Close the double quotes
) – Close the parenthesis from the one be QUERY and IMPORTRANGE

Once you do this you will see a #REF error. Click on that to see the “Allow Access” button.

Then I went into the spreadsheet and shared it with the appropriate people. I have also warned them not to type into any cell that is synced. They can use text effects (like strikethrough), or filters, but they can’t type over anything (that breaks the sync and will remove all existing data).

This at least provides them with the field trips for which a bus is requested (which is most of them).

Weekly Review 2024-04

February 12, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

52Frames

I completed the sixth challenge for the 52Frames Photo Challenge.

Super Bowl Sunday

This was mostly a lazy day. I did a bunch of web updating, application updating, website backups (remember to create your backups), and a little bit of reading (Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential).

The game wasn’t all that great. The one thing that did strike me though was that the Lions have looked like they belong in the top tier of teams. This is the first time in my life that I’ve actually been able to say that.

Jokes

I set up a new Moodle Course. The main purpose right now (there will be other uses coming) was to create a Random Glossary Block of Jokes. I’d like to do something similar in WordPress, but I’ll need to figure out how. Moodle was simple.

Grocery shopping

I did the grocery shopping this week as D1 was over. It still amazes me how one gets used to the way that a particular place is laid out to navigate. Our local grocery store is still closed because of the flooding on December 15th. The store that I shopped at has a very different layout. I’ve been there before, but I’m still getting used to the layout.

This reminds me just how important the visual look and feel of a web resource is. I’m hoping to do a bit of revamping of my website soon. I’ll need to remember to make navigation as easy as possible. I also want to add some features, so I need to make those easy to use as well.

Google Appointment Slots

I worked with a fellow employee who wanted to add an application to the work calendar. The application has refused to sign the student data privacy agreements that we now require. So, I asked what the person was trying to accomplish. That person explained. I opened Google Appointment Slots and walked them through the process. “WOW, this does the same thing. How is xxx going to stay in business?”

Moving From One Island to Another

Some of the Tech Integrators I follow on a list serve were complaining about Quizlet. Apparently, there are student data issues and cost issues. Lots of posts were about moving to another provider with similar concerns:

Knowt
Kahoot
PearDeck
Quizizz
My observation is that many are going to move from one island to another. The island looks good until you realize that you are captured. Incredibly, instead of asking about an island where you aren’t “captured”, many are moving to another island owned by a venture capitalist who is going to want/need to make money from you soon.

I shared Study State which was created as an open source project by a high school senior. This is a project that scratches the itch of an individual. Thus, the concern is if that individual moves on.

Randy Rainbow

We went to see Randy Rainbow this week as well. Good show. Very much what was expected. It was a fun night.

I was a bit surprised that not many people I chatted with the next day know who Randy Rainbow is.

Earlier Posts:

That’s it for now.

A black bowl with shave soap forming a lather around the edge.

52Frames Challenge 6

February 11, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

The Challenge for this week was “Shot from Above”.

I choose to do a picture that I’ve wanted to do for a while. This is shave soap lathered up.

black cup with shave soap whipped into a lather

Image of Cory Doctorow sitting in front a bookshelf with books. Mr. Doctorow has one hand resting on his leg and one hand resting via his thumb on the side of his face. Image Creator: Jonathan Worth | Credit: Jonathan Worth Copyright: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Enshittification and Owning Your Own Land

February 6, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

Owning Your Land

“Don’t build your house on land that you rent.”

I saw this somewhere today (lost exactly where, so I can’t link to it). The basic premise is don’t create all your stuff somewhere that someone else owns. We’ve seen this play out with Facebook and Twitter. Now more than ever, it is possible to own your own website and post to it. Not only that, but with the Fediverse, you can also automatically have those posts show up on a social media site. This was incredibly hard in the past. Thus, we were forced to choose between having your own website and the network effect of other sites.

In the past, it was difficult to own your website and leverage that to an audience. Developing an audience was difficult and limited. Thus, many of us felt as though we had to choose:

Own your information and posts
OR
Have a chance at an audience and interaction

It wasn’t that many of us were looking for a huge audience, we were just looking for connection and interaction. Twitter was actually a huge part of successfully creating that audience/connections. After quite the run, we know how Twitter has turned out.

The Indie Web has long been focused on people owning their own material and interoperating. However, even the Indie Web was too complex and “fiddily” for most people. Recent advances have made connection and self-ownership much easier.

Enshittification

According to the American Dialect Society “enshittification” is the word of the year for 2023. Enshittification was coined by Cory Doctorow : (Pluralistic: How monopoly enshittified Amazon/28 Nov 2022). Please read through his write-ups, he describes the process of web sites, companies, and others moving from being powerful for users to powerful against users. This has increased the number of people who are willing and dedicated to taking back ownership of their material, thoughts, presence, and connections.

My story

This has lead me to be more thoughtful and willing to post on my own as well. I hope that you’ll join me.

Weekly Review 2024-03

February 5, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

Moodle Login

This was a great week for Moodle work. I’ve fixed the Moodle Login Page so that it looks and functions so much better (see write-up for details).

Apple iPad Training

I participated in a training for using Apple’s iPad with early learners. It was too generic for me. In order to really use iPads proficiently, teachers need training. Training is a rare and extremely valuable resource in education.

Friend Chat

I had the opportunity to have a great chat with a friend. We chatted about some educational things (he works in the district that I worked in for many years), photography (we’re both doing the 52Frames Challenge), families, and how to be better people. I always enjoy chatting with him.

Dog Walking

I was watching D1’s dog this weekend. I took her for a wonderful walk (well, 75% of the walk was wonderful). She did all the things (cleaned up after her), plus she got some really good sniffs in. This seemed to be especially the case where a set of tracks let to the woods.

However, on the way back, a dog came barking and running after us. The black dog attacked D1’s dog. They locked in, biting each other around the snout. D1’s dog probably had the better of the situation. The couple came running and we were able to get the dogs disentangled. They apologized a couple of times, but I was most concerned to get D1’s doggie home to see how she was. Fortunately, she had just a little scratch on the bottom of her jaw.

Please folks, know and watch your dog.

Costco

We made our first trip to Costco in several years. This is due to Costco opening in Maine. Naturally, we picked up a few things.

Joplin

Just a quick note about Joplin. I use Joplin as my main note-taking app. I’ve added a couple of plugins that make it even more useful.

Journal – this allows you to quickly create a Journal entry for any day.
Note Tabs – this allows for multiple Joplin notes to be “open” at once.
MacOS Theme – just a visual thing.

Joplin syncs to all my devices through Dropbox. This means that I’m not dependent on any other service. (I could set up a NextCloud instance on my web server, but that isn’t necessary at this point.)

It works really, really well. This is how I write blog posts and many other things as well.

Now I Know

February 2, 2024 / Troy / 0 Comments

One of the few email newsletters that I have stayed subscribed to is “Now I Know“. The newsletter provides high-interest, entertaining, informative stories. This is a daily newsletter that I read, every day. It brings a bit of joy into my life.
Some recent topics:

Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service – on the day he was shot
Math and the Missing Planet
The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders – one of my favorites, this is about a restaurant staffed with people experiencing dementia and how to be respectful.

Again, this newsletter brings me a bit of joy every day. I hope that it will bring you joy too.

Dan Lewis recently moved from Mailchimp to beehiv. Some subscribers were lost in the process. So, he’s now running a campaign. With 20 referrals, the referrer, in this case, me, gets a signed copy of one of his books.

Subscribe to Now I Know (and help me get a free book).