I didn't get to watch much college football yesterday, but I think the sixty minutes I watched last night had to be the best hour of the day. When I tuned in at about 10:00, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Alabama were all losing, with time running out in their respective games (and I'd be happy with a loss for each of these teams). Michigan and Notre Dame ended up surviving their games (by the same final score, btw - 32-29), in dramatic fashion. Alabama lost to unranked Texas A&M on a last second field goal.

All of this in the span of about an hour!

tags: footballcollegefootballncaa

post published in /2021/10/10

I'm finally getting around to updating some of the scripts I have for Daystream in the iOS Shortcuts app. Shortcuts is still somewhat limited but has surprised me with what it can accomplish.

I've now got it working essentially as a conduit between Drafts and the Daystream API for posts. This allows me to publish to Daystream directly from my favorite iOS text editor, with tags and everything. My post earlier today about last night's football games was the first to use this setup. It should enable faster, and more frequent, posting.

I plan to create similar Shortcuts for links and photos, too. For those, I'll use drafts to write the main text elements for the content (the body and tags), and then use Shortcuts to get the other content (url for links and a photo for photos).

Then on to the watch.

tags: daystreamdev

post published in /2021/10/10

Renee and I might have stumbled upon an unexpected use for AirTags — training a dog to stop barking. Teddy is a constant barker when he's outside. He barks at everything — joggers, bikers, leaves, even the political sign out neighbor recently installed.

He escaped from the backyard a couple weeks ago. Luckily, he ran right to the front porch, but we thought it would make sense to put an AirTag in his collar so we could locate him if he ever got away from us.

Testing it out this morning, Renee hit the "Play Sound" feature, which makes the AirTag chime a bit to help you locate it when it's nearby you. With his AirTag chirping, Teddy immediately took notice, stopped in his tracks, and did the tilted head thing. Hmmmm. Maybe a simple ping to his AirTag will stop a barking episode? We'll see....

tags: dogappleairtag

post published in /2021/10/10

New York and Texas are winning the war to attract bitcoin miners (cnbc.com)

'Within the U.S., 19.9% of bitcoin’s hashrate – that is, the collective computing power of miners – is in New York, 18.7% in Kentucky, 17.3% is in Georgia, and 14% in Texas, according to Foundry USA, which is the biggest mining pool in North America and the fifth-largest globally.'

What a crappy headline. Texas is in fourth place according to the source cited in the article. Why is the fourth place state headline worthy, while the second (Kentucky) and third (Georgia) place states are not? Eyeballs and clicks, Texas apparently brings (or has the potential to bring) more of each.

And this is really sad when you consider that so many people "only read the headlines" these days. They don't walk away with only part of the story, as you would expect of someone only reading the headline. They actually walk away with a completely different story.

That's sad. And dangerous.

And it's not journalism. It's clickbaiting.

tags: journalismwebbitcoin

link published in /2021/10/10

Scripting News: Sunday, October 10, 2021 (scripting.com)

Dave Winer celebrated his 27th anniversary of blogging today...by launching Drummer, a new blogging platform.

That's pretty cool.

I enjoy watching everything Dave does, and am a bit curious about Drummer. I'm not keen on having to log into Twitter on someone else's server to post to a blog, though. This is particularly true with the outliner setup, which is most effective when always open and at the ready (meaning, to get the benefit of the outliner setup, I'd have to stay logged into my Twitter account on someone else's server, all the time).

I've looked at it a bit. It reminds me of Dave's old Fargo platform, which I tried and liked. I haven't looked closely enough to be able to understand the differences between Fargo and Drummer (and, presumably, the advances and benefits offered by Drummer).

Worth watching.

tags: blogging

link published in /2021/10/10

Pioneering astronaut Sally Ride will appear on a limited-run US quarter | Engadget (engadget.com)

The American Women Quarters Program looks interesting. Sounds like the first quarters in the series will begin circulating next year.

tags: coinsnumismatics

link published in /2021/10/10

Well, I completed my annual feat of strength today. I'm happy to report that I can still manhandle the pool cover all by myself, without drowning, breaking my neck, or otherwise inflicting significant bodily harm on myself. The gash on my ankle from clubbing it with the anchor tool doesn't count, I've decided.

tags: diypoolthattimeofyear

photo published in /2021/10/10

Photo posted via iOS Shortcuts app

photo published in /2021/10/10