Frank’s technique works. This is my second test.
The possibilities for using Drummer just opened up for me. The script looks as if it is going to open my eyes a bit. I’ve only really scripted posting to WordPress via XML-RPC using AppleScript. I am guess tags and categories could be handles in the same way Frank get the image and inlineImage attributes from items?
This could be delightful.
I’ve been messing about with Drummer for a while now. I alway enjoy when a new thing opens up a few rabbit holes. Drummer certainly does that.
Blogging in an outline is different. I’ve done a little before with Fargo. Then I mostly thought about using the outliners reorganisation affordances as the main idea. This time I am seeing more possibilities with the micro, one line posts narrating a day’s work. As I am on holiday this week and not busy I’ve managed a bit of this, not so much work as narrating my play. Back to school on Monday, so I’ll be doing less of that.
One rabbit hole than digging out how some things work in Drummer. Mostly by trying failing and trying again after changing one this. Obviously reading the docs would be better.
It is truly fascinating seeing a little of how Drummer is put together. Reading other users experiences and getting a glimpse into Dave’s mind.
The GitHub site, Issues · scripting/drummerSupport has some great questions and answers. The later provided not only by Dave but other folk. This is also a useful place to help in exploring drummer. The requests and problems found give a bit of insight in how other bloggers think and blog.
Amit Gawande produced a great summary post: Getting Started Blogging with Drummer. This clears a lot up and points to some other good information. I’ve tried to write these sorts of notes when on a new path. I often get dragged down by an error and into a confusing maze to fix that. The notes get skipped or bits missed out. Amit’s are exceptionally clear.
Jack Batty has some drummer notes, a lot of the questions have resonated with me.
Thursday’s rabbit hole was getting my drummer blog to appear on my own domain.
And that tunnel lead to some more raspberry pi thoughts. I though I might get river5 running again. This time on a separate pi, using my, slight, new found reverse proxy knowledge to get it going on river.johnj.info. And I did. Unfortunately, it is really slow. I guess because of the old pi. I also failed to install forever, which might make running things with any consistency. I might dig out a newer pi and try again. Hopefully slightly quicker than yesterday & today effort.
I’ve also been reading Testing HTTPS · Issue #78 · scripting/drummerSupport so made some progression that. I’ve added a cert to river.johnj.info, but I’ve not changed the templates in Old School yet.
Meanwhile I’ve been blogging a bit both to my ‘real’ blog and through Drummer. I cankt imagine at the moment giving up WordPress. I like the archives, search(sic), categorisation & tagging too much. I wonder if these features will come to Drummer is some way. One solution for me would be a way to post from Drummer to WordPress in the same way as you can tweet.
Currently I spend more time reading my blog as opposed to writing it. Nearly all via the On This Day page. I find this endlessly fascinating. Partly seeing old thoughts and how they have repeated and morphed. I also love seeming the seasonal changes reflected through my photos and observations.
Apart from being a new place to play and learn I and still seeing, for me, drummer as a possible place to build, pulling and gathering material that could end up here.
This post turned out to a set of rambles rather than coming to a coherent conclusion.
Scripting News: Sunday, October 10, 2021
Today is the 27th anniversary of this blog. To celebrate, I’m opening up Drummer to the world. I hope you love it as much as I do. ❤️
Drummer is, as you would imagine a really interesting project. A quite different approach to blogging.
I’ve been lightly beta testing Drummer since 4th September. This is my Drummer blog: John’s tambourine.
I would not like to presume I can understand Drummer well enough to give anything like a complete description. These are some of the features that have interested me so far.
Each of these elements give you a lot to think about. It has made me think about how I blog, and how I’d like to blog. It is an opinionated system. Coming from one of the internet elders you would expect no less.
If you are interested in blogging, microblogging and the like I’d recommend you have a look at Drummer. Certainly read: About Drummer
I just paid my annual Flickr pro fee. Very happy to do it. I like taking pictures although I don’t think of myself as a photographer. I am not really interested in the technical aspects. I use photos in the same way as blogging. To think about something, or note it, remember it, share it, or collect it for later. A diary or commonplace if you like.
I was also really pleased to see Flickr’s blog around it’s continuing support for Creative Commons and the announcement of the Flickr Foundation.
We believe the establishment of a non-profit Flickr Foundation will combine with Flickr to properly preserve and care for the Flickr Commons archive, support Commons members to collaborate in a true 21st-century Commons, and plan for the very long-term health and longevity of the entire Flickr collection. We’re also in the early stages of imagining other educational and curatorial initiatives to highlight and share the power of photography for decades to come.
The other thing I love about Flickr is it’s API. I am no more a programmer than I am a photographer. But I have had a lot of fun with the Flickr api.
One of the reasons I’ve managed to play with this API is its consistency. Other APIs I’ve used with have gone away, changed or added authentication too difficult for me to grasp. Given that I use them occasionally I am often flummoxed by changes. I only notice then when something that worked stops working.
What I love about Flickr is then threefold: a solid and consistent service that I pay for, the api(solid & constant too) and Creative Commons I get for free.
Flickr’s future has been in doubt a few times since I started in 2004, Interface changes caused some consternation. Flickr has managed to continue when other services have gone. I hope I’ll be paying for it for a good few more years.
I just switched to the block editor to test out the new WordPress Block patterns feature.
You go to the pattern library, copy a pattern and paste it into your editor. I did that here and replace the 3 images that it came with. I added some captions. Using this pattern.
Here is another pattern.
And the days are not full enough.
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
– Ezra Pound
I don’t think I am quite ready for the Block Editor yet but these look interesting.
Firstsite’s mission is to improve the well-being and life-chances of all residents of East Anglia through innovation, ingenuity and creativity. We empower people, no matter their background, to be creative together and lead happier and healthier lives.
This page has several pdf downloads of art activities that looks as it they could be useful in school. I’ve been trying to avoid school related things over the holidays but there are a lot of interesting links out there.
Searchable; Memories that you own and are in control of;
is a friendly introduction to digital accessibility – specifically to help understand WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), the official resource for legal compliance.
One of many I found via Joe’s site. This looks like a very easy entry to thinking about accessibility. I di a bit of cleaning up on the glow Blogs site early this year and could have done with this then.
Featured image, spider and young, my own.
I’ve been interested in the Garden versus Stream discussion around creating web content. Some of the sites I’ve work most on have be gardens made with stream technology 1.
Since I’ve installed the Posted Today plugin I often look back over previous posts. This leads to some tidying up, and fixing of links, formatting, adding tags and the like.
This feels very like pruning, staking and generally tidying up. Behaviour that is usually associated with gardening. My blog is mostly for myself 2. I feel like I am regularly pottering around, joining dots and revisiting old thoughts.
An example: A while ago it was the 10th anniversary of my post Field Recording at the Scottish Music Centre. It is now full of broken links. Some, Flash soundcloud players, I was able to fix, replacing the old flash players. Some were just gone to 404. Of these some I could add archive links. I didn’t fix everything because I got a bit distracted with all the links I followed to check. Many rabbits holes.
I am not making a huge effort in this, I find it valuable to read my old posts and if I have a moment do a little gardening cleaning up my stream.
Featured image: n3_w1150 | Curtis’s botanical magazine.. London ; New York [… | Flickr Public Domain
Somewhere or other1 I Saw a link to v.2 (1799) – The Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine or compleat cabinet of the curiosities and beauties of nature. Intriguing enough which lead me to discover the Biodiversity Heritage Library:
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL is revolutionizing global research by providing free, worldwide access to knowledge about life on Earth.
About BHL – Information about the Biodiversity Heritage Library
There seems to be a vast collection of biological books that are free to read and download. There is also a twitter account, @BioDivLibrar and an amazing Flickr account: Biodiversity Heritage Library where there are over a quarter of a million images, many public domain. They have also contributed
over 2 million BHL images have been uploaded to the IA Book Images Flickr stream as part of the Art of Life project. These images are identified and uploaded in bulk using an algorithm. They offer a great opportunity for serendipitous discovery via browsing.
from: About Biodiversity Heritage Library | Flickr.
The Library are asking for people to help tag their flickr images and this might be a good activity for secondary pupils?
As a primary teacher, once I’d stopped just raking through some beautiful images I knocked up a quick Bird Bingo game for my class to help with bird identification. It has random cards and a caller.
There is page after page of beautiful pictures in the photo stream I defy anyone to leave it quickly. Example page 2094!
Featured Image: n456_w1150 | Natural history of the animal kingdom for the u… | Flickr public domain.
The Spring Holidays, like others will increase my blogging. It has been a busy term both home learning and back in school. Looking forward to a holiday of wee walks (still stuck in Glasgow) and some random browsing.
The Scottish Invasive Species Initiative (SISI) is a 4-year partnership project which aims to work with local organisations and volunteers to control invasive non-native species along riversides in Northern Scotland, for the benefit of our native wildlife and communities.
I see quite a bit of Himalayan Balsam around, quite pretty but a nasty smell.
"At startup, an Android device sends Google about 1MB of data, compared with iOS sending Apple around 42KB. When idle, Android sends roughly 1MB of data to Google every 12 hours, compared with iOS sending Apple about 52KB over the same period." https://t.co/nPXiM8Tqi6
— Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) March 31, 2021
The Featured image is Maxwell dynamic machine, 1961 | Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence found via the Never Been Seen | Science Museum Group Collection page, which I learnt about from Ian Guest
Earlier in the week I saw micro.blogger Dan Cohen’s newsletter: Humane Ingenuity 36: 15% Faster which linked to DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly: Deformin’ in the Rain: How (and Why) to Break a Classic Film
Dan said:
Jason Mittell provides an extremely creative, occasionally bizarre, frequently hilarious, and ultimately rather helpful “inventory of deformative practices” to uncover hidden layers of meaning in media.
The article provides a pile of great gifs and distorted videos.
I’ve played around with this sort of thing before montages, gifsets and the like. Mostly DS106 inspired.
One idea I’d kept playing with is layering of images. My plan had been to layer a sequence into a movie, I’d never really got it going smoothly. I mostly just run a photo set through a script to get 1000s of images and choose a few interesting ones.
I usually use a few commandline tools for this, imagemagick & ffmpeg but there was a rather nice idea of using the StarStaX app an application for Star Trail Photography. I loaded it up with 90 odd jpgs images from a walk and merged them. I then stitched them together with ffmpeg and added some audio “Mysterious Ethereal Song” by theojt :
Not exactly a work of art but fun, I also learnt how to fade a video with ffmpeg which might be useful.
