Kind: Notes

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There have been times on this site where I have not posted something because it was too technical, or I haven’t distributed it to its normal locations because of the audience. So, I’ve arranged to contribute those topics and thoughts to another site, Gadget Wisdom.

So, when I want to talk about my latest tech obsession, and I do have a few, I’ll be doing it over there. Feel free to subscribe. The site already had it’s own Twitter, Facebook, and other feeds as well.

For those of you Indieweb-inclined…I made sure it supports webmentions and such, and will likely add more of that in the future.

IndieWebCamp NYC 2017 is happening this weekend, 9/30 and 10/1. I will be there on Sunday only, as I cannot be there the day before. Sunday is Hack and Create day. Hoping to help some people set up their websites if I can, and maybe improve my own.

Looking forward to seeing Tantek Çelik, who has been a fixture at every IndieWebCamp I have attended, and Marty McGuire, who I met at the last IndieWebCamp in NYC. The rest of the attendees I’m not as familiar with. Should be a fun day, following Yom Kippur, which is substantially less fun.

For three years now, on and off, I’ve been working on a plugin for WordPress called Simple Location. You can see it on many of my posts(View All Location Posts here). It adds a location and optionally a map to posts on my site. It also will change the displayed time and timezone on those posts to match the location(this post is set for Manila, for example, instead of the default of New York).

It is the most mainstream of the plugins I’ve developed, but has only 30 active installations, which suggests location may not be important to that many people who have WordPress sites, or I haven’t made the plugin good enough. I’m working on the latter now. Anyone have any suggestions?

On my way to Manila, I stopped off in Portland, Oregon for the annual Indieweb Summit. It was actually the other way around. I was going to Portland, and it was suggested I should just keep going. This Summit was better than last years, which was a great event. Hosted by Mozilla Portland,

I got to attend the Leadership Summit, for community leaders(apparently I am one), where we agreed we needed to meet more often to organize our efforts…and got some Indieweb stickers. Despite my misgivings, we now have an Indieweb WordPress chat room as part of the Indieweb suite of chat rooms. So far, it has kept the WordPress stuff in one place.

My attachment to WordPress and involvement in the community seems to have made me an ‘authority’ on the current state of how Indieweb concepts apply to WordPress(which, by the way, runs this site). And we have accomplished a lot this month…with many Indieweb plugins seeing updates.

I always feel inspired to work on my Indieweb projects after meeting inspiring people, like the great Ryan Barrett, who maintains Bridgy, the software that translates likes and comments on Facebook and Twitter into comments on my site. It’s fortunate that I have nothing to do but eat, sleep, and work in Manila, because it has given me a chance to continue that inspiration.

Here’s hoping for more Indiewebcamps. Anyone interested in one in New York?

I’ve been in Portland, Oregon for the last few days attending the Indieweb Summit. This is the second year in a row I’ve attended this event. There is something inspiring about being in a room full of people who share the same interest as you. It encourages me to want to do more. Not only did I get a chance to help other people with their personal websites, I built something based on feedback given by an attendee and was able to have a basic version to demo by the end of the weekend.

And now, onward and outward.

About a year ago, I was looking to reorganize my music collection. Well, 2017 is here again and I am once again being annoyed about the data associated with my music files. No matter what tool I use, it seems keeping these things under control is a massive effort.

After three days, I have given up on directory by genre and am going solely with artist. Meanwhile, I am still trying to fix the genre settings for music players that use them. Allan Sherman is not genre Christmas. The Beatles are not Data. Someone contributed this data to a service. I’m not sure if they were not messing with me.

I have organized much of the files, but it looks like I’ll have to do an audit of all music I backed up from CD, because the auto-organizing tools seem to have reclassified a lot of material. But, for now, I’m pausing with forty-nine gigabytes worth of MP3s and a lot more tagging. Organization is frustrating.

In thinking about the current election, I was reminded of the words of Julia Sand. Sand was an educated woman who, while bedridden in her family home in New York City, wrote Chester A. Arthur beginning in August of 1881, a month after President Garfield was shot. Arthur took the oath of office on September 20th, after staying in seclusion while Garfield lay critically ill and bedridden. Arthur was a controversial figure, as he’d been involved in several scandals in New York and was thought to be a political lackey of several powerful New York interests.

For reasons unknown as all she knew of him was from the newspapers, Sands believed in Arthur and wrote to him with advice and encouragement many times over the next few years. Some of the letters survive, including the first.

‘Your kindest opponents say ‘Arthur will try to do right’ – adding gloomily – ‘he won’t succeed though making a man President cannot change him.’…But making a man President can change him! Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine. Faith in your better nature forces me to write to you – but not to beg you to resign. Do what is more difficult & brave. Reform! It is not proof of highest goodness never to have done wrong, but it is proof of it, sometimes in ones career, to pause & ponder, to recognize the evil, to turn resolutely against it.“

She goes on later to write:

“How sad it must be for anyone to look back and feel that the best strength of their manhood has all been wasted on unworthy ends. For your own sake and for the sake of those who love you, do not fill your life with actions which afterwards bring you only regret. Go back to Washington – forget New York, political strife and personal animosity. Remember that you are President of the United States – work only for the good of the country. And bear in mind, that, in a free country, the only bulwark of power worth trusting, is the affection of the people.”

Arthur surprised people. Having been a direct beneficiary of the political spoils system, he nevertheless participated in dismantling it and pushing for civil service reform. Admittedly, there aren’t that many parallels between Donald J Trump and Chester A. Arthur, but the often forgotten legacy of Chester A. Arthur is that a man can be changed by the realities of the Presidency.