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September 2023 Forty-two posts
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UNEXPECTED LIFE-THREATENING WAVES & CURRENTS
Foursquare check-ins
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Foursquare check-ins
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Enhydra lutris, a Sea Otter. Viewed from the beach at Perkins Park. Hanging out in the surf as though it were the most normal thing in the world to dive for seafood and eat it between waves. We’ve had a nice trip to Monterey.
Foursquare check-ins
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After a hiatus of waveriding, back at it. I used an app called Dawn Patrol. My fastest wave was 15mph, longest ride was 104 feet, and best wave time was 15 seconds. #stoke
Foursquare check-ins
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Foursquare check-ins
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Foursquare check-ins
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I left when it got windy enough for kitesurfers. Terrible conditions. Had a great time.
Foursquare check-ins
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Dawn patrol to catch some hurricane swell (San Clemente State Beach)
Foursquare check-ins
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Foursquare check-ins
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I don’t remember making this card for my father (highlighting his snowboarding and identification with the 101st Airborne Division, which he served with in Vietnam as a combat medic). I suspect it was a Christmas/Holiday card. It’s really not bad.
Foursquare check-ins
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This is a 16 year old photo of a UI feedback incentive tool. I kept this at my desk to get folks to come by occasionally and give feedback on projects we had going on. I didn’t—and don’t—consider myself a UX expert but I have always cared about how the websites and web applications I work on get used. I don’t think this would work quite as well now. #uidesign #uxfeedback #webdeveloper
Foursquare check-ins
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Shogun Warriors
When I was a kid my family unit lived in the Philippines for a time. It was there I was exposed to giant robots from Japan. This is why there are so very many photos of robots here.
I am fascinated by robots. Robots are machines who have “life” but are not “alive.” I often think about the difference between robot and human. People will mention a character for my collection I don’t have: like Robocop. Robocop is a cyborg. He’s a hybrid construction: of a living creature and technology. A Roomba–a vacuum that rolls around and you can guy buy at Target–is a robot. So is R2-D2 from Star Wars.
Giant robots are a kind of weird exception to the rule. I am working out in my head how they meet my criteria for inclusion. Giant robots–machinder–often have a pilot or group of pilots. They do not necessarily have “life” absent pilots. So why aren’t such robots, as featured in Robotech, Voltron, Pacific Rim disqualified? The first: I imprinted on them when I was a kid in the P.I. The second: These mammoth machines appear to be robots, and tower over human beings. Their size necessitate help from human beings to take action. They can’t save the planet without human piloting.
My family returned from overseas and we were in California for a time. The Shogun Warriors appeared as toys on the shelves, and as a comic. It makes me feel happy to see the original art for the cover of comic Shogun Warriors #1 be up for auction, and to have increasing bids. If it were not so high I’d definitely put in a bid.
Here’s a screenshot of the auction as it is right now:
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OB in the rain today. Photo from an accidental screenshot.
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CSS is wild
I’ve been using this site as a mere Instagram repost-target I’ve forgotten that it was initially to share all kinds of random thoughts.
To that end I’ve been making CSS changes to allow more flexible aggregate views. I mean, what’s the difference between a set of search results, a pile of instagram thumbnails, or a category view. It’s an interesting way to think about things.
And CSS is pretty cool now, CSS Grid in particular is extraordinary.
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Foursquare / Swarm to my own site, #indieweb style
I’ve been adding more “stuff” from my life to this website. I use services like Instagram, Flickr, Mastodon, Foursquare, Facebook, StackOverflow, GitHub which have public-facing components. In the spirit of the #indieweb PESOS I got the notion to import my over-a-decade worth of Foursquare and Swarm checkins to my site. I don’t have a particular goal in mind, though it might be nice to add location context to some of my photos. I’ve been hesitant to do this because really, sharing realtime data give me an ooky feeling.
But it is my data, so if anyone’s going to do anything with it it ought to be me.
The first thing I looked at was whether I could use Foursquare APIs to get this data. I set up a developer account and played a bit, but once I hit the API key to OAuth exchange step it started to occur to me that these APIs are not designed for an individual to access their own data. It’s really about entities who want to explore the whole corpus of location data and activity across the planet. My needs are far more modest.
It became clear what I wanted was an export of my own data. So, I requested it, which I could do from the Swarm App:
A few days later, I got the data. It’s a zip file with a pile of files in it, here’s a listing:
checkins7.json checkins1.csv checkins1.json checkins2.csv checkins2.json checkins3.csv checkins3.json checkins4.csv checkins4.json checkins5.csv checkins5.json checkins6.csv checkins6.json checkins7.csv comments.csv comments.json expertise.csv expertise.json paymentProfiles.csv paymentProfiles.json photos.csv photos.json readme.html tastes.csv tastes.json tips.csv tips.json unconfirmed_visits.csv unconfirmed_visits.json uniqueDevices.csv uniqueDevices.json users.csv users.json venueRatings.csv venueRatings.json visits.csv visits.json pix/
And a few hours after that, after writing some PHP code, I had some checkins displaying to my website. I wrote code to parse the JSON files and handle the edge cases. Checkins come 1000 to a file, and some checkins are arbitrary text, and don’t have a true “venue” – they have a type of “venueless” – and if you checkin multiple times per day you get a checkin without venue data. All the little decisions made by Foursquare programmers years ago that impact the shape of the data here and now. Data has lots of wrinkles, and resolving what to do with them is the role of the programmer.
So I’ve added a display of the checkins to single blog posts if they exist, and single days, and also to month views. I’m considering whether I want to more closely correlate the data with my own posts, or include photos I posted over the years. I may yet do that. It might be fun to correlate beach and pool images on my blog with the location data. Actually come to think of it in some cases there is Instagram location data I could capture for those photos.
Aside: Instagram is hostile to programmatically asking “hey, what location was it for that photo?” I would probably use instaLooter to do that kind of work. I like that tool a lot. That project and its programmers keeps up with the little war Instagram wages on people trying to backup their photos and work with Instagram data. Back in 2020 I did that: Instalooter to WordPress
It was fun to explore the thousands of checkins and see lots of my life unfold. I remember seeing that movie! That was a fun baseball games I’ve not imported the data as WordPress data at this point. I exported it all to html files which I can display as needed. So I have a folder full of html files named by date. I am considering whether I want to import the data in that way. I’ve shied away from relying on adding lots of metadata to my WordPress posts but maybe if I’m expecting the site to have richer content I need to embrace that kind of change.
So here’s an example, from May of this year:
It’s my data. It’s my website. I believe we as users of these services have an absolute right to repurpose our own data as we see fit. As a programmer, I am proud to have capability to do so.
Here’s the code I wrote today: foursquare-export-to-html
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I’ve been playing with @dawnpatrol.app — with it and my phone it geolocates and measures the movement of my bodysurfing. They recommend using an Apple or surf watch but I use my phone. They discourage it but as I’ve been carrying my phone in the water for years I’m undeterred. With it plus a @surfline sub I can watch video of some of my rides. Fun.
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Commit Messages!
I just committed a pile of changes for this sites theme–named “Roanoke”–in the WordPress themes repository I keep — it’s private — on GitHub. I’ve been doing more atomic commits earlier in the week but as I’ve made more radical changes in the second half of this week I kept not being sure of those commits. Here’s the list of comments I made to the commit:
- standardizing on ul.resultset deprecating ul.roanoke-excerpt-list
- standard template element for search for all usages
- added foursquare checkins, styling and Roanoke::addFoursquareCheckins
- updated title text for tags
- paginated pages for tag, home blog page, search, category pages now infinite scroll automatically
- new classes for body related to open and closed search
- new container for div.blog-resultset
- remove old click-based ajax loading of paginated pages
- new tool to allow shifting resultset layout for tag pages
- new template for full screen and layout toggling
- deprecate roanoke tag item
- deprecate div.aggregate-content in favor of ul.resultset
- adding year-XXXX for alll listings which list posts
- altering displayed date to use year with gradient colors by year
- adding display of tag description on tag pages when available
- add root font-size for legacy template pages
- update padding for blog post title for single pages
- several media queries removed
Process-wise, I’m satisfied with this. But if I were working with others I’d be obliged to be a bit more atomic with my changes since the changes have been more radical. But since I’m the designer, ux researcher, front end engineer, back end programmer, and primary user I suppose I’ll let it slide.
It’s awful fun to program.
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“Cyborg Sea-Dog, tell me what you dream of”
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Sad Tomorrow; Object & Param Tags
This morning I’m fixing older blog posts. There are still some instances that look like:
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/L2unAeJ2qhA&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/L2unAeJ2qhA&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
That’s from a post from 2007: William Gibson, Gravy, and a Video
I look for the video, by loading up
http://www.youtube.com/v/L2unAeJ2qhA
, which, surprise! shows me an error:Luckily there was some context for what the video was. I had written “Bonus: we live in a world where we can pull up videos like this anytime — it’s, aptly, a peppy song about feeling sad:” – and on the YouTube page I could see it was for The Muffs Sad Tomorrow.
WordPress can automatically expand a YouTube link to a proper embed code, using oEmbed — turning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsxyaZhdW1s
into<iframe title="The Muffs - Sad Tomorrow (Video)" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vsxyaZhdW1s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I forget when that capability was added, but there’s documentation about the ease of adding YouTube links on YouTube Embed in the WordPress documentation. That documentation refers to using WordPress “Blocks” which given the volume of legacy content on my site I’ve avoided.
oEmbed is a great idea! When it works it makes the web far better. Sadly, using oEmbed for things like Instagram doesn’t work. Facebook removed support for transcluding content several years ago. Yet another way the large stacks make the web worse for us real people.
Kim Shattuck, the lead singer for The Muffs, died in 2019.
My whole life is a drag
Baby listen to me
When I go away, will you care?
I feel naked and weird
Do you see what I hear?
Maybe one day I’ll die, who cares -
Vimeo for Roku Disappeared
Hey! I liked that app! I didn’t use it much though.
Learn more about Vimeo ending support for TV apps:
Important update regarding support for Vimeo TV Apps.
On June 27, 2023, we are ending support for our existing TV apps.
That means we will remove the TV apps from the app stores and we will not publish any new releases, security updates, or provide technical support for TV apps.
We will be ending support for:
- Apple TV
- Android TV
- Amazon Fire TV/Amazon Fire TV Stick
- Roku
⚠️Note: This change does not apply to branded apps available to Vimeo OTT Enterprise sellers. This only applies to the Vimeo app on the platforms linked above.
How can I still watch Vimeo videos on my TV?
You can continue to watch Vimeo videos on your TV by using our free iOS and Android apps or by using a supported browser. You can use these apps to cast via Apple AirPlay and Google Chromecast to your television.
Why is Vimeo ending support for the TV apps?
We strive to provide our users with a best-in-class playback and live streaming experience that’s optimized across devices, geographies, bandwidth, and network performance. Occasionally, we retire legacy products and features that are no longer consistent with our standards. We believe that our users looking to view Vimeo videos will receive a better ongoing experience by casting via our mobile app, enabling customers to enjoy Vimeo content on their TV.
Back in 2016, we launched our Apple TV, Android TV, and Roku apps to bring the best of Vimeo to your big screen. Today, Vimeo is much more than a viewing destination. It’s an all-in-one video experience platform giving creative professionals, businesses, and organizations everything they need to make and market amazing, impactful videos.
I’m late to find this out. But I’ve been playing with oEmbed and revisiting older videos I posted.
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With @hellokellykuhl at the @sandiegowavefc game! @nwsl
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Mat Surfing!
A great channel with videos about mat surfing: FRINGESURFER.TV:
Drawing Lines:
Close to the Water
Love Letter to Prone
Go get some stoke!
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People in competitive sports watch game films to understand gameplay: theirs and their opponents. Bodysurfing is not competitive for me, and is unlikely to be, but I still learn from game films. Courtesy @surfline and @dawnpatrol.app
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Militant Angeleno is moving and upgrading!
All good things may or may not come to an end. After 16 years, the Militant is making his last post on This Here Blog Site…Because he has recently purchased his own domain and has set up a brand-spankin’ new WordPress blog site! So, no, The Militant isn’t calling it quits, he’s just moving. He’s had it with this Blogger.com platform and its very user-unfriendly formatting. But history-loving archivist he is, he will keep this site up as The Militant Archives and continue to link to this one when and where appropriate. Some important posts will be updated and migrated to the new site as time permits though.
In the meantime, you can find The Militant at his new website: militantangeleno.com! See you or see you there!
Exciting! I haven’t mentioned The Militant in a few years but I still read via RSS.
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Music!!!!!
I’ve been tinkering and updating my website lately. And catching up with my RSS feeds. And here’s my friend gRegor with a post I might have an opinion about. He wrote:
Recommendations are always welcome! What are some of your favorite albums of 2023?
Also I was looking at when I met gRegor and it was in the innocent pre-pandemic days of December 2019. We were so innocent then.
Here’s a photo:
Anyway, as to his post–he alludes to Pablo’s 1000 albums in 1000 days project. Ambitious! In his own he writes:
I’m keeping it simple for now, so not going to commit to 1000 albums or posting about each one I listen to, but I am sure I will share some of the high/lowlights.
Recommendations are always welcome! What are some of your favorite albums of 2023?
One of the things I do is that every year I start a new playlist with songs I’ve discovered or are in heavy rotation. It might be things that I hear on the radio (yes, I listen to the radio). It might be music that appears in media–an example of that was when I heard Jidenna’s Long Live the Chief in Luke Cage. It might be from music history videos from Trash Theory, this year Wet Leg’s Chaise Longue meets that criteria (see CHAISE LONGUE or: How Wet Leg Buttered The Indie World’s Muffin). So it’s not so much albums that I listen to as I use adding a song to my playlist as a potential starting point to see their other music or other music related to their era.
Some standouts from this year:
- Sarah Shook and the Disarmers has impressed me as a brutally frank country artist that puts me in the mind of the best of Dwight Yoakam
- Stew & The Negro Problem‘s Florida is not a new one but the refrain of “Florida / Florida you kill me” guts me every time. Selected lyrics: “Cali gave us The Beach Boys and Charles Manson / Oklahoma gave us Leon Russell and Hanson”
- Kitty is an artist I’ve been following a long time. “Baby Pink” is great – it came out in 2020. I also have “Thanks Kathryn Obvious” which is low-fi rap and includes the line “I just came for the fries with the carne asada:
- Another one Trash Theory turned me onto is The Tourists’ cover of “I only want to be with you” which I had somehow never heard. It’s the band The Eurythmics were before they were The Eurythmics
- And in songs from my youth that I forgot existed but love dearly: Translator’s “Everywhere That I’m Not” is an absolute fave. The earnestness of the refrain gets me. It’s all about longing, which was what my teen years were all about.
- Lana Del Rey’s “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” is another sad song that hits me hard. Who doesn’t appreciate pop stars who quote Tolkien anyway?
- In the obsessive category: “Down To Earth” by Peter Gabriel from the WALL-E soundtrack went on super heavy rotation for me a few months ago. The movie and its themes of planetary recovery and the chance for humanity to fix its damn problems gets to me. Managing to be hopeful as it does it is infectious to me. And yes, I’m using the word infectious deliberately. Here’s to hope!
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The quarter mile buoy used to be my favorite part at my former favorite place: La Jolla Cove. My notions of favorite place have changed but I still love it.
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First up today: coffee; then shoring up CBLDF patch; adding Robby the Robot; (both on my tote bag; then, having regained sewing confidence: fixing broken strap for handplane.
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Oceanside Harbor this morning was pretty fun.
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WWMMD
I feel like it was in this speech by Bruce Sterling where I was first exposed to the notion that it was the digital thing that was the more real thing. Reality is digital and the actual stuff Is secondary. As to the outside world being scary and intimidating, yes. But at times like that I ask WWMMD? And Mad Max would travel the wasteland, getting in adventures, eating lizards, and toppling tyrants. Because who the hell else is going to do it?
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Things said to me as Kingpin at San Diego Comic-Con 2023
Cosplaying as Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, is one of my favorites. In part it’s because it gets more response from people on the job – people working at the Convention Center. Often people of color. But I also get misidentified in interesting ways too! Here are a few quotes said to me this year.
You look sharp!
Mr. Freeze!
Lex Luthor
That diamond though!
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Dave McKean’s RVI
One of the panels I attended this past year at SDCC was focused on Dave McKean. I went mostly because Kelly is a huge fan of him and Neil Gaiman’s work. But I’ve appreciated his work for a long whole.
One of the things he referred to was keeping tv on in the background:
RVI
What’s RVI to Dave McKean? “random visual input”
He described it as a trick to his mind, as a jumping off point for creativity. It’s a way to keep moving forward.
It reminded me of something I read from an interview with director James Cameron decades ago. Apparently he would keep MTV music videos on in the background when writing or editing.
I do the same thing, I like to consume creative works at sort of random.
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“But everything looks perfect from far away”
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Thumbnails for my multipage comics
I’ve been trying to improve the way my comics appear on my own website. Some of the multipage comics I’ve made also include thumbnails. The problem? It’s not possible to visually see that these are multiple page comics.
The solution was to create thumbnails which represent the multipage nature of the comics. To that end I wrote some code to do just that.
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My cousin out at Shores! Was awesome out there @jonnysnow16 !