A quick test of Jetpack’s AI assistant. I asked it about H5P because I’ve been using and writing a bit about it recently.
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traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body
Find the Plovers H5P example in Glow Blogs
A small example of the H5P Find Multiple Hotspots content type in Glow Blogs.
I was intrigued how these wee chicks survived given the number of dogs walked along this shore in addition to plenty of gulls & crows who I would expect to enjoy a plover chick dinner. Even the adults are quite hard to spot.
I am building a collection of H5P examples on Glow Blogs. I’ve also been using it to make some spelling crosswords, word-searches and cloze procedures for my class using the North Lanarkshire spelling word list.
Merlin
Since dawn chorus day I’ve been noticing bird song more than ever. This has lead to wondering which birds are singing. A recognise a very small number. I’ve tried a couple of apps and my favourite so far is Merlin.
Merlin identifies bird sounds using breakthroughs in machine learning technology to recognize species based on spectrograms—visual representations of sounds
Rather delightfully you see the names and thumbnails of bird the app recognises. This are hi-lighted each time the bird is heard. Even better you get the same effect playing back the audio. Hopefully this will lead to me being able to recognise a few more bird songs without the app.
How accurate the app is I do not know, but I have seen most of the ones it has identified nearby.
Bookmarked AudioMoth | Open Acoustic Devices.
AudioMoth is a low-cost, full-spectrum acoustic logger, based on the Gecko processor range from Silicon Labs. Just like its namesake the moth, AudioMoth can listen at audible frequencies, well into ultrasonic frequencies. It is capable of recording uncompressed audio to microSD card at rates from 8,000 to 384,000 samples per second and can be converted into a full-spectrum USB microphone.
Looks a bit tricky to actually buy at the moment, but interesting device.
Liked: The Verb – The Sound Designed Verb
Ian McMillan celebrates spectral spaces, the pulse of the body, and the power of repetition, in a Verb which showcases emerging talent – new sound designers from the Sound First scheme ….
Ian is joined by the songwriter, producer and sound designer Benbrick, the poet, playwright and performer Hannah Silva, and Sound First participant Noah Lawson, to explore what sound design can bring to poems, and what sounds are buried in poems themselves.
Really enjoyed listening to this, perhaps I am a wee bit more tuned into sound after Sunday.
Dawn this morn, REVEIL 2023 streaming
The above is a short selection of a few moments of the stream I broadcast this morning, 10 minutes in total. The segments are each separated by 1 seconds of generated silence. The Whole thing is on the Stream Page. There is a fox barking near the start and a pigeon claps its wings over head near the end.
Joining the #stream for the annual celebration of Dawn Chorus Day. Organized by @soundtent ‘Reveil travels West on live audio feeds from streamers around the world at daybreak.’ I ‘m at
http://locus.creacast.com:9001/GlasgowWest
HikeTracker
I’ve been looking for a replacement for Trails .
There are quite a lot of GPX apps out there so it has been interesting looking at them.
Many ‘hiking’ apps are concerned with giving you routes or posting routes you take their own or other services. These apps tend to be quite fully featured and often need an account on an online service. Trying a few out gave me a chance to think of what I wanted.
- Easy recording of a trail
- Trail shown live on a map, preferably OpenStreeMap.
- Quick and simple transfer of gpx track to my mac so that I can use it to tag photos, etc.
- Not completely killing the battery of my aging iPhone over a day.
Other features are either a bonus (some stats) or a complication (online services).
I’ve settled, for now at least, on HikeTracker . The app has been designed by a hiker, with the main aim of accuracy & simplicity. It fulfils all of my requirements.
The app is set up to work well “out of the box” for a hiker or walker – just tap “Start” and go!
It has worked well for me in a couple of tests, geotagging some rather blurry photos and giving me a track to add to the map.
I was happy to pay for trails and would be happy to pay for this free app too.
Featured image: Screenshots of HikeTracker, map on the left, stats on the right.
Bookmarked What I Mean When I Say Critical AI Literacy by .
Readings/videos on inequality/oppression created, exacerbated, or reproduced by AI/algorithms:
Interesting thoughts & a collection of links to look through. Holiday reading.
In reply to So long, Twitter API, and thanks for all the fish by .
Well, it’s come to this. Twitter is burning, a billionaire owes money, an API will soon get lobotomized, so Bridgy‘s Twitter support will die within the month.
A lot of the reactions on my blog come from Twitter thanks to Bridgy. A marvellous service. I really disliked it when Twitter swallowed comments, then Bridgy came to the rescue. Thanks so much for all of Bridgy.