A Whole Lotta Nothing: Ideas for my dream blogging CMS.

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Matt has some observations and suggestions. I keep looking at Statamic, an extremely configurable flat-file system, in order to ‘build in my own complexity’. At least, to build in the features I really want. The thought of trying to import/convert all of my 80,000+ posts from various CMSs is likely impossible … but a blogger can dream.

Still, I have to get off Squarespace. I see what Matt’s posted, and the thought of entering all that metadata before posting makes me itch … weighting my mental inertia.

Fifteen minutes of linkfinding.

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ReadWriteWeb: Apple iMac could be set to try out touchscreen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. After I use my iPad, it drives me crazy when I try poking my laptop or desktop’s screen.

Paris Review: Backyard Bird Diary. Always wanted to create one of these kinds of diaries. Been a long time since I’ve sketched. I should buy some colored pencils.

Capital+Main: Power of the Pulpit: How Conservative Congregations Scale the Church-State Wall to Political Victory. Listen to what Bible scholar Dan McLellan says about this.

AppleInsider: Neil Young tries excusing his return to Spotify by saying Apple Music is now as bad. Water-drop torture is the same, no matter the brand.

PVC: Podcast playback: immersive reading + italics on website-desktop & mobile. I know there are rules for use of italics; I use them when they make the most sense for emphasis. Keeping their ‘power’ is paramount.

Vox: Biden is not “waging war” on American energy. He’s boosting it. Yet OPEC still has its heavy hand on prices. Seen that recent $0.30/gallon price increase?

DP Review: Nikon Z9 gets firmware v5.0 with portrait processing options and feature refinements. A Z8 or Z9 is on my dream wishlist.

SciAm: How the Solar Eclipse will impact electricity supplies. Paywall keeps me out. If you’ve got a subscription, enjoy.

CNet: Do You Need a Screen for a Projector? As an A/V professional, I can tell you that you’ll be blown away by the quality of a good projection screen. The materials have advanced so very far. Contrast and color are exponentially better than they were just a decade ago.

Zeldman: Open-source moderation.

Fifteen minutes and NetNewsWire.

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VF: Mark Seliger’s Portraits From the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Beautiful light.

Atlas Obscura: Why the April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse May Blow Your Mind. A nice discussion of the experience of awe. Reminds me of some of my experiences back in September and October of last year.

fx guide: The Ultimate RC podcast +1 (Reunion Show) – Nikon buys RED. “The Good, the Bad, and the Damn Annoying.”

The Hill: Press: Does telling the truth matter anymore? Bill Press hits the target.

Popular Information: New data explodes myth of crime wave fueled by migrants. “… across America, rates of violent crime are dropping precipitously — and the decline is especially pronounced in border states.” We all know the 'crime wave’ rhetoric was bullsh-t.

PVC: The Updated Professional’s Guide to Buying an M Series Mac. Still love my M1 Ultra Macbook Pro.

Guardian: Legal action could end use of toxic sewage sludge on US crops as fertilizer. I thought this had been outlawed decades ago! Good lord. So many more toxic chemicals these days, on top of heavy metals.

New Scientist: Mars's gravitational pull may be strong enough to stir Earth's oceans. Now that’s going to set tarot readers and astrologers wild.

ReadWriteWeb: A rogue AI might be able to replace all music with Taylor Swift covers. Our local radio station plays “Hotel California” so many times a day, I think I’d welcome a Tay-Tay cover.

Medium: How long does it take to design a website? Many clients will balk, yet this is a very realistic timeframe. The reality is, many will not have the cash or the deep desire to have such a highly-customized site. Hence Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress themes.

TechDirt: When Viral Advocacy Fails: TikTok’s Call Flood To Congress Backfires.

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Whoops. “It appears that TikTok may have taken the wrong lesson from all that and assumed that simply flooding Congress with calls is an effective strategy. It can be, but you have to equip callers with a basic understanding of what it is that they’re calling for and why. And maybe it doesn’t make sense to do it on a bill built off the (mostly false) belief that your app is controlling the minds of gullible American voters.”

The Conversation: Why you might start to hate the influencers you once loved.

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“From inspecting every detail of their posts, to accessing company accounts, posters were committed to uncovering the hidden details of influencers’ lives. They celebrated theories that were proven right, like when a long-suspected pregnancy or breakup was announced, and congratulated themselves on their ‘detective work’.”

How many remember the ‘Scooby Do’s’ who outed the woman pretending to be Kaycee Nicole, back in the early 00’s? I contributed to that effort. Blogs were about authenticity, not artifice.

As I said thirteen years ago (!!): “I can’t really wrap my head around any particular event that encouraged this behavior, but now everyone seems to want to portray their life and work as a bottomless box of Sugar Puffs … (snip) … after a day (of reading posts) … my pancreas is pinching something awful. After a week, I’m projectile-vomiting from the glucose overload. Am I the only one?”

New word of the day: parasocial. Never heard it used before. I like it.

Okay, a philosophical question about podcasts ...

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Podcasts, to me, are any audio file that has an RSS feed and can be accessed episodically. I was having a discussion (argument) the other day with an audio professional who felt podcasts need to (must) be highly produced slick presentations. I’m working with a nonprofit that has an ‘embarrassment of riches’ of great video productions, many of which I can strip audio from and present with their requisite slide presentations (as a link in the description for the podcast).

What do you all think? Can I do this? Put a slick intro and end-piece on the video’s soundtrack and present it as a podcast? Or can I use the podcast service and just title it differently (as a ‘webcast’ or ‘video event’ or something else)?

Is podcasting this highfalutin’?

Vox: Everyone's A Sell-Out Now.

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“The problem is that America more or less runs on the concept of selling out.” A pretty cynical statement. I understand the feeling, however. The social media influencers I tend to follow are the restless ones, unsatisfied with their reach on Instagram, they’ll push Youtube, or TikTok. Or other channels. They have the threadbare profit to be able to analyze their best channel, their best followers, and tailor accordingly. It’s instructive to watch, but I have to really commend them for the hours and sweat equity that they put into these well-produced video shorts. They continue to do it, generally, for about two years before burnout (IMHO). I can only wonder if they ever get the $ remuneration that truly represents those hours. I suspect not.

Getting onto Instagram reels and seeing one influencer with like 30 beautiful shorts in a single hour of the morning, I want to just bury my head and give up life as a committed slacker. I suspect I’m not alone. The pressure to broadcast with perfection (the young and unblemished only need broadcast, also) must be intense.

Guardian: The big idea: should we keep politics out of social media?

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“Most social media algorithms are programmed to optimise the spread of inflammatory content, ‘fuelling the maelstrom of online political debate and, despite what the dominant companies like Meta say, it’s not to champion freedom of speech, it’s all to encourage people to post more, create more content and to keep making money out of people’s data’.”

Sensationalism sells. Viral sensationalism perverts. That’s all I’ve got to say on the subject.