Andy Sylvester

Yep, the tags came through to mine.

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system (I added the first text within the admin page).

Another test post - forgot to enter some text in the last post!

Testing, testing, kicking the tires on this again...

CNN.com: Black mayor ousted by White predecessor 

CNN.com: Election breach in Coffee County, GA part of a pattern, locals say

FunktionalHome.com: 4 tips for problems with toilet floats 

ChrisMendiasCorner.com: Quick fix for a sticking Fluidmaster toilet float - Good suggestions, duct tape worked for me!

TheCurbShop.com: Poster of "Save The Manuals" - this is a collection of manual shift patterns for cars, I saw this on a t-shirt recently, my first thought was that "manuals" referred to computer software manual - hah!

IProgrammer.info: Professional credentials to further your career - discussion of nanodegrees

WashingtonPost.com: 8 habits that can add decades to your life

EvanApplegate.com: How to make maps - a great list of resources on how to create maps yourself 

Ucsf.org: Announcement of Data Journalism Course-In-A-Box

P2pu.org: Course-In-A-Box open source online course tool

Github.io: Covid data journalism Course-In-A-Box

OregonLive.com: The Oregonian to cut print run to 4 days a week

TheFederalist.com: 7 revelations that explode J6 narrative 

TheFederalist.com: FBI targeted traditional Catholics

TheFederalist.com: Republicans investigating J6 Committee say Dems destroyed evidence in coverup

Opb.org: Republican Senators sue Oregon Secretary of State , saying walkout doesn't affect their ability to run for office 

JustSecurity.org: The Hatch Act Bars Meadows' Removal

Plos.org: Ten simple rules for writing a technical book

Oregonlive.com: Watts Rebellion and the righteousness of Black rage

Hartmannreport.com: The Shocking Voter Purge Crisis of Democracy 

Austin Kleon: Never waste a midlife crisis

I've not touched PHP-MST for so long. I got out of coding for a while. Maybe I can look to get some niggles resolved

Testing, testing...

Had a good conversation with Ron Chester yesterday about MyStatusTool. I will be looking at adding better editing features next, followed by the ability to edit subscriptions within the app instead of using a configuration file.

JustSecurity.org: National Security Implications of Trump’s Indictment: A Damage Assessment

It is those national security implications, as evidenced in particular by the 31 counts lodged under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. § 793(e)), which we briefly lay out here.

Tidbits.com: Mastodon: A New Hope for Social Networking by Glenn Fleishman (January 2023) - Good overview of Mastodon features

Summer Emacs: An explanation of how I use Emacs (covers info on using Org Mode as well).

I used the blockquote tag in that last post - looks good!

Another user calling for a tool like MyStatusTool in 2008:

If you hosted your own Twitter, just like you host your own website, you could put your twitter anywhere. Case scenario: I have a twitter blog at dembot.com/twitter All of the friends I follow? How would we connect? You guessed it: RSS! Somebody get me a soda, Im feeling dizzy.

Dave Winer linked this morning to a 2008 post on a "decentralized Twitter". I believe that MyStatusTool meets that definition. I also discussed this more in a February 2023 post where I link to some other Dave Winer posts on bootstrapping. MyStatusTool is definitely in the bootstrap phase, and available to anyone who wants to try it!

My Status Tool is an application that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies. Each post has its own page, just like Twitter.

My Status Tool is an application that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies. Each post has its own page, just like <a href-"https://twitter.com/AndySylvester99/status/1663339414272233472"Twitter.

MyStatusTool is a linkblogging tool - use this tutorial to see how to add HTML to your post to create a link!

The startling, damning details in the Trump indictment - Politico

Former President Donald Trump's second indictment, annotated - CNN

Donald Trump indicted on 7 counts in classified documents probe - CNN

Intense negotiations underway to end Oregon Senate impasse Oregon Capitol Chronicle

Ken, thanks for getting started!

Andre, thanks for making a test post!

Test post 03 Andy 6/9/2023

Test post 02 Andy 6/9/2023

Test post 01 Andy 6/9/2023

Test post new 2001 app w/Caddy

Bringing Bluesky to the open web

I borrowed a lot of prior art for FeedLand from social media, specifically, the idea that subscription lists are public. So you can walk a network of followship, and get ideas of who to subscribe to that way. Click a checkbox and you're connected.

That makes it easy to peer with social networks, if they support OPML subscription lists and RSS feeds of posts. And -- as of May 24, we now have that implemented for Bluesky, through their API.

Everything's ready to go!

I've spent the last few days teaching FeedLand how to do with Bluesky what it does with old school RSS feeds. Today I got it working. Real sense of accomplishment. Not deployed yet, but I'm pretty sure it will be soon. The pieces fit together amazingly well.

If you're a regular FeedLand user who also uses Bluesky, please respond to this post. I'd like to loop you in on the new stuff when it's ready for testing. You don't actually need a Bluesky account to get the benefit, that's the cute/cool thing about it. We're bringing Bluesky to the open web. 😀

Test post from mst.andysylvester.com

Got HTTP Error 500

Just added Scripting News as a feed, worked ok. Tried to add the feed from my new MST version, got an error. Need to look into this...

2009: The only platform that really works is a platform with no platform vendor, and that's the Internet.

I was a skeptic

I was a skeptic when Apple came out with the iPhone, iPad and the watch and ended up eating my words. I use all three products daily.

When the iPhone came out I was a Blackberry user and loved it. I was angry with Apple for not running Mac software on the phone.

I had reasons for not liking the iPad and watch, but eventually used the iPad even more than the iPhone and I wear the watch every day.

None of them for me were revolutionary products, but they were good products. Worthwhile products. Impossible to resist.

Update: On the other hand, here's my one-month review of the first iPhone. It was not at time, for me, a winner.

Did you know that you can get Alexa to play the Succession theme song. On the Studio player it's magnificent. Now you can have it be the theme song for your great accomplishments. Get an elegant bit of code running? Fire it up! You're the boss. You did it.

More Succession. People wonder how can they like a show where everyone is ugly. Maybe the answer lies in the fact that the main character of the show isn't human -- it's The Song. Maybe it's just a 4-season-long music video.

Newsletter apps have had their moment, now WordPress has one, and wonderfully it has inadvertently plied open the lock-in that Substack imposes, by making everyone use their editor. WordPress has a time-tested API, so I could theoretically write my newsletters in Drummer and push them up to WordPress which would then send them out.

I asked ChatGPT for a list of popular podcasting clients.

The more I use ChatGPT the more I wish it had existed when I was a student. I would have learned so much more. It also would have filled in the blanks for impenetrable teachers and textbooks.

Mastodon, Bluesky and Twitter should not be silos relative to each other. I'm starting to post links to Masto on Twitter, and links to Twitter on Bluesky. All combos. I realized I was, in my mind, assuming these were silos. I think other people do too. That's not a good limit to impose, doesn't work in our interests, as users and developers.

I wonder if any librarians have written about ChatGPT. I bet they aren't worried about losing their jobs. That's the thing. When Napster was booting up, most of us were thrilled with the ability to finally program our own music. Now we take it for granted. Google was, it turns out, just a glimpse into the future. What we really wanted was a virtual librarian who had access to all the information available to our civilization. Now we're getting there. When I was growing up, the librarians, who became my friends, only had access to a very small fraction of what was known. Basically the books that can fit into a modest-size storefront in Flushing. Now when you ask for help, they'll have access to everything.

The 1619 Project had a primetime special on ABC last night. Great perspective-changing stuff. I think a lot more people watch ABC than watch Fox.

BTW, we also have a limited ability to edit a tweet. Screen shot.

The usual monthly ritual. Here's the May archive in OPML.

Trying to figure out issues loading feeds.

Test post 06 5/28/2023

Test post 05 5/28/2023

Test post 05 5/20/2023

Test post 04 5/20/2023

Test post 03 5/20/2023

Test post 02 5/20/2023

Test post 01 5/20/2023

Test post 04 5/11/2023

Test 3

Test post 03 5/11/2023

Test 2

Test 1

Another test

Test post 02 5/11/2023

Test from MST-PHP

Test post 01 5/11/2023

Testing, testing

Test post 02 5/8/2023

Test post 01 5/8/2023

I have migrated the feed reading part of MyStatusTool to use the formatting from Colin Walker's MST-PHP implementation - looks great! Next up will be to add posting capability...

Test post

Test post 35 5/7/2023

Testing adding a link from FeedLand feed.

Testing adding a link again.

Looks like things are working on my new MST install

Test post 35 5/7/2023

Test post 34 5/7/2023

Another test post from my MST-PHP install

Test post from my MST-PHP install