Routine Revelations

I’ve ported a blog post I wrote in 2014 using Fargo to the site I am setting up using Jekyll and Netlify. The post is an historical account, current at that time, of the tools I used to write and host content on the web. I’ve been blogging since 1999, which means I am approaching 20 years of blogging.

Unfortunately, not all of my early content, almost 8 years worth, is accessible due to how that content was stored. However, there is access to the last decade worth of my writing, some of it good, most of it meh. I’ve pointed to the sites hosting those last 7 years.

Unlike most others here at micro.blog, I consider my micro.blog as my blog. The reason is that I distinguish blogs from long form writing and publishing on the Internet. For me, a blog post is 1 to 3 paragraphs and written in about 15 minutes or less.

I blog to share a thought or something of interest to me, I write to formulate and share ideas.

When I set up my micro.blog account and associated a personal blog domain to it, I decided that I would use my then current blog, Let’s Be Frank, for long form writing. The “broad” push to HTTPS is going to make that a problem because that blog is managed using an app written by Dave Winer called 1999.io, and it has a lot of Javascript libraries that I don’t think he is every going to convert to HTTPS.

So, stay there and maybe figure out how to convert to HTTPS or look somewhere else? I recently learned about Netlify from Jack Baty and after checking out its web site, I determined it has much of what I was looking for: low price, easy HTTPS implementation, and flexibility.

Netlify does not provide a Content Management System, but it integrates with Github to provide continuous deployment, so you can use static site generators like Jekyll for publishing content. Since I have a little experience with Jekyll, I decided to try out Netlify by following their Jekyll tutorial and it didn’t take me long to get a site up and available via HTTPS.

The upside with the approach I have so far is that I can write and publish content from any device, particularly my iPad. All you really need to do is add a file in the proper naming format to the posts folder of your Github repository. I’ve cloned the repository to Working Copy on my iPad and found a Drafts action that will save a new item to Working Copy and insert the proper header informatation that Jekyll requires.

Right now the new site is very much a work in progress and there may be changes. Oh, and I am aware of the irony of me writing this post here but this is is where you know me and I am not a stickler to such self determined rules.

Too many people in the United States think our government will be overthrown by force when the reality is it is happening in just the opposite manner. The strong arguments against gun control in the U.S. is evidence of this, as the argument centers around needing to keep guns as protection against government oppression. The powers that be don’t need to take guns away, they just need us to keep arguing about them, which fossilizes idealogy and keeps attention away from what is really happening.

The constitution enables authoritarianism when Congress and the Supreme Court do not function in their jobs as overseers of the Presidency. When Congress and the Supreme Court simply align with a president due to party affliation, you have a dictator in practice.

Today the process nearly complete, and gerrymandering will seal the deal. Gerrymandering removes the one power citizens have, which is to vote. You don’t need to burn down the flag nor rip up the Constitution, all that is needed is idealogical compliance to what the Presidency wants.

Tolerance is fundamental to freedom. If we stop tolerating actions or opinions that we disagree with, you stop freedom, democracy disappears and is replaced by dictatorship. The irony is for the idea that kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful and should not be tolerated, we are giving up the very freedom that too many gave their lives for.

You can not dictate respect. Dictating respect is counter to tolerance and is counterproductive because respect is earned, not given.

Do you really want freedom? If you do, it starts by tolerating those with whom you disagree and not treating them with contempt.

One thing I find frustrating about iOS are the number of apps that all seem to do the exact same thing. How do you decide on one over the other? An example is Drafts and Ulysses, both are good markdown editors but Drafts supports more automation. Last summer I was looking for a new editor and Ulysses came highly recommended, so I bought it, but then the company switched to a subscription model and that turned me off, I decided to not buy in to the subscription.

Then I learned about Drafts, and so I went and downloaded it and have used it to write some blog posts. To date I have mostly used it to write long posts for one site that only has a “basic” web-based editor. Of course, Drafts has now been recently upgraded and it too has a subscription model.

To me, it doesn’t make sense to have Ulysses and Drafts on my iPad, Drafts seems to able to do the job good enough. However, so far I have not seen an Action for sending text to Wordpress, which I find a bit surprising. Does anyone know of such an Action? The one in the Drafts directory appears to require components not part of Wordpress.com.

You might think it too fine a point, but I think any blogging product requires the ability to edit what one has written. To me, editing is a fundamental difference between blogging and social networks because blogging is about permanence where as the social network timeline/newsfeed is a black hole.

To me, what makes micro blogging different from social networks like Twitter is the permance I describe above, and therefore editing should be a fundamental requirement for all micro blogging apps.

Google has released the new version of Gmail, which I am checking out. I have been using, and like, Inbox mostly because how quickly I can use it to triage email. By triage I mean browse for messages I want to read and then quickly archiving all the remaining messages. No other app, including Gmail provides as easy a way to archive a group of messages.

The downside of Inbox is that it is very JavaScript heavy and therefore the web app performance can suffer. Another downside is that the app versions don’t look as good on larger screens such as on my 10.5 iPad Pro in landscape.

So, I am considering using Gmail on large screens and Inbox on small screens. However to decide that, I need to use the new Gmail for a while.

What, if any, relationship is there between free speech and cable TV, and in particular news or opinion shows on cable TV? Cable TV is not the public square nor is it public airwaves, it is corporate owned and exists for the purposes of making money. The primary method for making money is advertising.

If people opt to make note of the advertisers and decide to not purchase products from those advertisers, which is known as boycotting their products, I don’t see how in any way that infringes on a person’s free speech rights. At most it infringes on that person’s ability to make money on cable TV.

Furthermore, free speech is a protection for citizens from government. If cable TV is not part of the government, then frankly I am not clear on what free speech rights apply to anything on cable TV. Claims about being “fair and balanced” is marketing and not statements of facts nor rights.