Samsung promises Matter support for SmartThings hubs, Galaxy devices, TVs, and fridges
Regarding which SmartThings products will be Matter-enabled, Samantha Fein, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at SmartThings, said the SmartThings app would be fully Matter-enabled, and all existing SmartThings hubs will adopt the standard, including those now being made by Aeotec.
I find the above confusing because I could have swore I read somewhere that only the version 3 of the SmartThings Hub is Matter compliant, which I took to mean my version 2 hub is not. Perhaps it’s a matter of waiting or perhaps will only work via WiFi?
Last night I updated the Surface Duo to Android 12L. So far it seems to be stable, although I have noticed some different behavior that could be by design.
The weather app on my phone says that it is 22 degrees outside and the real feel is 8. Check the date of this post and note that this is in southeast Michigan and not the Upper Peninsula. Still have not felt motivation to go outside for a walk.
This is the earliest that I have had to put on full winter gear to walk outside in many years. Light snow with wind chills in the 20s.
A good article in the Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks, America Is Pursuing Happiness in All the Wrong Places. It makes good points, but in my opinion does not go deep enough. To truly grow, learn the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is dependent on externalities, whereas joy is a state of being. Said differently, joy is a conscious choice, a practice if you, for how to see everything. Happiness will not help you love your opponent, but joy will.
Finished reading: Jesus' Alternative Plan by Richard Rohr 📚 If your answer to the question, “Do I stay Christian?” or “Why are you Christian?” is, because of Jesus, then it makes sense to dig further into what is it that Jesus taught. Richard Rohr walks the reader through the core of Jesus' teaching presented in the Sermon On The Mount.
Four years ago, ActivityPub support in micro.blog was released. In context of the current state of the “social network” affairs, a rather prescient milestone.
How I Use RSS
We tend to think about RSS in terms of web sites and web applications and what gets over looked is how you can use it personally. For example, I send items from FeedLand to Radio3 to add to my linkblog. I have an IFTTT applet monitoring the linkblog RSS file that takes new items and adds them to Pocket, which retrieves and stores the full article content that I read later.
As I read articles in Pocket I might highlight parts that I want to remember. The highlights in Pocket are grabbed by Readwise, where I can read through them and have them presented to me daily. Finally, Readwise exports the article highlights to Roam and Evernote.
In this example RSS is the backbone to my personal knowledge collection and refinement. It glues together for me hundreds of web sites and six applications.
RSS To OPML
Daytona is effectively a personal search engine that indexes the OPML files stored with my Drummer account. I am able to use it to search through a good chunk of my writing that I have published to the web over the last decade.
What I would like is to get what I add to my linkblog feed, which is RSS/XML, in to Daytona. What I need is a way to copy new entries of an RSS file to an OPML file that could be stored in Drummer and indexed by Daytona. I don’t need this to happen in real time, I could live with producing the file once a month. Note that you can see my linkblog feed in the Links tab of my daynotes site.
I imagine a nodejs script that takes as input a RSS xml file, reads each item and creates a new OPML node with the content and link to the article. The output would be a corresponding OPML file written in the same directory that I could import in to Drummer. The OPML structure could be based on the date. For example, the top level node is the month, and the child nodes would be date. Pretty much the Drummer blog structure. The RSS items on a date would be children of the date nodes.
If I had such a RSS to OPML script I would use it to make OPML versions of my Radio3 linkblog feed, my FeedLand Feed, and maybe even my micro.blog RSS file. The result would index all the content I publish to the web in Daytona that I could then search for when desired.
Reading an article written by the folks at raspberrypi.com about why they set up their own Mastodon instance, and I find the following statement interesting and compelling. It goes on to state how their DNS registrar effectively provides verification that they are who they are.
We’ve opted to host our own instance. We’ve done this because, with multiple instances out there, we had to decide how to make sure people following us knew that our Raspberry Pi account was the “real” one.
Busted out the Stormy Kromer for my morning walk. Outdoor temperature dropped from 60 degrees yesterday to 36 today, and the forecast for the upcoming week has highs only in the 40s. ❄️
The only stream that I follow consistently and frequently is my RSS stream. While I cross post what I write on my blog to Twitter, I don’t check Twitter often, mostly just during events like the Super Bowl. I check my micro.blog stream a couple times a day, and I frankly appreciate its smaller size (relative to Twitter) that makes it easier to get to know people over time.
I created an account on Mastodon this week, but it overwhelms me in the same way as Twitter. Too much from too many people I don’t know. I feel like I am already at max news/social streams and don’t need more nor alternatives. Debating about whether I even want to find an app for Mastodon to put on my iPad.
I connected the Freedom Pro folding Bluetooth keyboard to the Surface Duo and put the Duo in the Nulaxy folding stand to enable this little, portable mobile workstation. It has been a long time since I have used this keyboard, but it works pretty well.
Putting these here for future reference, good stuff from the micro.blog community.
I updated the footer of the pages here so that there is a link with the Mastodon address to make it easier to follow this site from Mastodon if you prefer.
I am reading that the Android 12L update to the Microsoft Duo 1 and 2 renders the phone practically useless and therefore I have enabled developer options to prevent my Duo from updating. I thought Microsoft got past this type of thing but apparently not. Will watch and wait.
I use the Arabica theme plugin for this blog that automatically puts the “Follow @frankm on micro blog” in the header after the title of the site. Given the increase usage of Mastodon, I wonder whether it would be better to replace that with the Mastodon account format, or be able to add it to the header? In the mean time, I have put the Mastodon “ID” for this blog in the footer. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way to create a link.
I’ve created a Mastodon account @frankm@twit.social, which I think will be my “direct” Mastodon account. I believe what I post here on micro.blog can be followed at @frankm@frankmcpherson.blog. I searched and found the account from twit.social, but none of my posts appear in the Mastodon timeline. Perhaps it needs someone following?
I have now played with the Microsoft Surface Duo for several hours and my first reaction is that the software does not do enough to take advantage of the two screens. For example, I expect all links I tap in the news feed would open in the other window rather than in place.
On Friday I found out that the Microsoft Surface Duo was on sale on Woot for $279, much less than its original price north of $1,000 so I ordered one that I received today. The battery is charging so I have not yet spent much time with it, but I am looking forward to learning the nuances of this dual screen device.