montage of 6 webpage screenshots: https://ecohustler.com/technology/blue-empire-the-norwegian-salmon-industry-consumes-25percent-of-all-wild-fish-caught-globally https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/curation-is-the-last-best-hope-of-intelligent-discourse https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/about/outreach/resources/turtlestitch/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3jrgYnljYI https://projects.kwon.nyc/internet-is-fun/ https://lessons.wesfryer.com/courses/coding/scratch-coding

School

Lessons by Dr. Wesley Fryer @wfryer – Scratch Coding We use Scratch a bit in class so adding this to a pile of links.

A variation on Turtle/Scratch stuff, there is some CPD coming up

Turtlestitch is freely available software that enables the generation and stitching of patterns using a digital embroidery machine. It gives programmatic control of the machine, enabling a wide range of patterns to be designed and stitched onto fabric. It was developed by Andrea Mayr-Stalder, and runs in a browser window.

Mac

TipBITS: Always Show Window Proxy Icons – TidBITS Bless TidBITS for this. I’ve been quiety grumbling for a while. As someone with poor window management I’ve alway loved proxy icons.

Internet

The role of human curators is not just to select and present content but to imbue the digital landscape with a sense of reliability and authenticity that only human insight can provide.

Curation is the last best hope of intelligent discourse. — Joan Westenberg

I’ve been meaning to write some kind of Important Thinkpiece™ on the glory days of the early internet, but every time I sit down to do it, I find another, better piece that someone else has already written. So for now, here’s a collection of articles that to some degree answer the question “Why have a personal website?” with “Because it’s fun, and the internet used to be fun.”

The internet used to be fun

Nature

Blue Empire: the Norwegian salmon industry consumes 2.5% of all wild fish caught globally | Ecohustler I avoid Salmon due to the sea lice and the effect on wild stocks here.

Music

Jumping right into the middle:

Since the castro problems I’ve been using Pocket Casts as my podcatcher. I don’t love it or hate it. I kept my Castro Pro sub going Now there is perhaps some hope.

We are excited to announce Castro has been purchased by Bluck Apps.

both Aurelian and Castro are designed to give a delightful experience to people who really love podcasts and listen to many of them. This is a niche, and we intend to serve that niche. If you have over 100 podcast subscriptions and listen to them all semi-regularly, you are probably one of our people.

Castro is Back

I’ve mentioned the app Aiko a couple of time. Until now I’d used it to transcribe podcasts to quote. Today noticed that it could export transcriptions as subtitle .srt files and I gave it a couple of wee videos that I had to remove1 from the Glow Blogs2 help site to comply with accessibility guidelines. Suffice to say I was very impressed with the results. Aiko is free and available for mac and iOS. Cute icon too.

Aiko app icon

  1. The plan was to add subtitles, but I ran out of time. ↩︎
  2. I am please to say I am back working on Glow Blogs on a part time basis. ↩︎