How lovely to see Dave Winer’s 30 years blogging in the Observer on Sunday.
I either read or was told by a friend once that Dave Winer was always right if you waited long enough.
I certainly benefited from blogging, podcasting & RSS which Dave was pivotal in
Developing. I’ve also been lucky enough to play with some of Dave’s more recent tools which always makes you think.
A few years ago1 I tested the WP OSM plugin. I didn’t get it to do exactly what I wanted so left it on the back burner. In the mean time I made a map system of my own. The plugin had been producing some security warnings from Jetpack and I’d deactivated it. Last week I saw some fixes and through I’d try it again. Using the gpx file I recorded last week and the associated flickr album2 I had another go.
I created the kml file with gvellut/flickr2kml, which is a command line app, to convert a flickr album url to a kml file with images. The map above combines the gpx track & kml file.
The result is not, so far, exactly what I hoped. I was thinking the images could be views at a larger size, or link to the bigger versions. I suspect I could use the flickr2kml templates to do that.
I am also wondering if I could overlay and overlap bigger versions of the images with some random transparency maybe something like this, but with some randomness:
A few things to think about.
I went back to a familiar walk today. The circuit of small hills round the Finlas Reservoir. The day started very bright with a clear blue sky. Once I was past the farm I started hearing the stags roaring in the distance. I saw and heard a lot of deer today.
walkmapGoing up Creaghan Hill most of the flora had died back, a few sparks of bog and common heather and some scabious for the most part. The bracken dying back. More deer on the hill and on the way to Beinn Ruisg. Colder on the hill and it started to get cloudy from the north. Between Beinn Ruisg and Creag an Leinbh, I saw lot of deer, most gathered in groups with one or more roaring stags. Spent a while watching. A few chases between stags but nothing serious. One 12 pointer was most active, fighting reed beds and following hinds.
By the time I got to the unnamed top between Creag an Leinbh and Balcnock, I could see quite a lot of heave clouds to the north. Ben Lomond got one or two showers, but I stayed dry.
Walking along the fence from Balcnock I put up a couple of snipe. One from my feet. I could see the ‘form’ it had been hiding in, surrounded by splatter of white droppings.
I went further along the fence, or near to it, than normal, finally cutting down past the reservoir. The Rowan are well covered in berries. It is fascinating to see where they manage to grow out of the way of sheep and deer. They were really shining in the sun, the higher ones already leafless with very pale bark were particularly dramatic.
Given I’ve not walked much this year, I was quite pleased with my puff. Even though it took nearly 7 hours for 10 miles I did spend a lot of time sitting watching the deer. Didn’t see another human.
Also noticed, Ravens, Reed Bunting, Stonechat.
Bookmarked gpx.studio — home.
just used this briefly today to trim a track I didn’t stop at the right time. Worked a treat.
Listened to 220. Autumn Journal – Rerun — Backlisted Where actor Sam West read a rather lovely section of the poem. A bit of a search found Mr West’s collection of #PandemicPoems music on soundcloud. Not sure how I missed that. Delighted to find
things to consider
A little housekeeping today, via my On This Day page. Three title added and an archive.org link added to a broken link.
There are 8 posts found on this site published on September 7
The above list is produced by Alan’s plugin, I’ve not used the arbitrary day option before. I do occasionally/ semi regularly/ when I feel like it, fix up a few posts in this way using the On this Day page. It is quite a pleasurable activity.
Listened to Episode 85: WordPress in Education – WordPress News on the WordPress Briefing.
This episode covers some suggested uses of WordPress in Education. I was please to hear it was not concentrating on tertiary education. The host Josepha Haden Chomphosy (Executive Director of the WordPress project!) gave some good reasons for using WordPress in schools. She also talked about the learning resources in WordPress. I am certainly starting to link to and embed these more in the help for Glow Blogs.
The show notes point to the Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 – Problem Solving with WordPress. I feel a little bit jealous. I wonder if something of the sort could be done in Scotland?
I, obviously, believe the blogs & WordPress have a lot of offer education. There are three main components of Glow, Google Workspaces, MS 365 & Glow Blogs. Google & MS have a lot of onboarding and help aimed at schools. I wonder if a project of this sort could exemplify the use of WordPress.
I started this two weeks ago when I went back to school. So past time for a summer recap:
As usual I took some photos, and I’ve strung them together, pummelvision fashion.
I updated the script a bit to fade the audio and added a gentler audio choice.
I’ve continued trying to write one note a day on ‘something natural’ and recording each months notes.
This summer has certainly not been good on the weather front, the tail end of a bug which seemed to take a long time to go away also slowed me down for most of July. Although I walked around a fair bit very locally (Kilpatrick Hills, Cochno etc). I didn’t add much to the walk list. I still managed to see a few new things (at least to photograph).
I continued working one day a week on Glow Blogs. There was a release (Glow Blogs Update 14 Aug 2024), just after the schools returned. I spent a fair bit of time writing and updating the various sites that comprise the help system. Checking things out and spending a lot more time in the Block Editor. Lots more to come on that front. I feel the use of blogs in teaching has decreased a bit but I believe they can still be useful in lots of different ways.
I’ve continued to use my blog (syndicated to mastodon & Bluesky via micro.blog) instead of X. I noticed a fresh flush of twitter educators coming through to Bluesky after Musk’s support for the extreme right in the UK.
I did a few The DS106 Daily Creates, but less than usual, my favourites were #tdc4584 &
TDC 5491.
I dodged away at a personal Flickr search page, Search Flickr – Results by Month, as I like comparing things I’ve seen throughout the year organised by month. I’ve already something similar for this blog.
Likes Sign the MPAs Petition.
The government was originally required to get these measures in place by 2016, and then by 2020. But by 2024, little has been done.
This cannot go on. The Scottish government must end the delays and act now to take this crucial step in helping our seas recover.
