Scripting News

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 02:34:28 GMT

Brits want to know why Donald Trump is such a.. you should listen.

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 16:31:23 GMT

Silent Movie GIFs is great. They show you tiny scenes from a silent movie, and then another and another, spaced out over hours. Here's a scene from the Buster Keaton movie One Week.

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 16:35:21 GMT

I did a bit more development work today on a project that stores stuff on GitHub as if it were a long-term place, a place to create a historic record. Of course I question that, I did when they were an independent company. Now that GitHub is owned by Microsoft, I still question it. Not sure if it's more or less likely to survive as-is for the indefinite future. Made me wonder what Microsoft could do to reassure developers, so we'd feel comfortable treating it as a permanent resource. Clearly that's in their interest. Microsoft has embraced open source, now I wonder if they have what it takes to be a leader.

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 15:00:09 GMT

I wonder why more American congresspeople don’t have blogs and podcasts. It seems they would want to communicate regularly with their constituents. Twitter has severe limits, as everyone knows.

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 14:25:46 GMT

I'm now archiving the RSS file for Scripting News in the GitHub repo, every night, along with the content of the blog for the day (in JSON, OPML and HTML). It'll be interesting to be able to track the changes to the file over (knock wood) long periods of time. Here's the source of the app that does the uploading. It's proven to be very reliable. 💥

Real ideas yesterday on MSNBC

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 15:49:40 GMT

Most of the time I spend watching MSNBC is a waste, but yesterday there were two items that were important.

On MTP Daily, an interview with Senator Mike Rounds, R-SD, carefully explaining how Trump still has the support of his constituents, but they don't like what he's doing with tariffs. I think this is a must-listen, a real milestone, imho.
On The Beat, author Tony Schwartz, interviewed about the angry Trump baby blimp in London, said it's funny (it is!) but is far from where we should be focused. He says getting non-voters to vote is where our attention should be. Couldn't agree more. I want a system, where voters have buddies, like sponsors in a 12-step program, who they commit to voting, and they engage on Election Day and make sure they do. They escort them to the poll if necessary. We should have drills. What an incredible demonstration that would be. Far more powerful than a march. Think about it.

A mutual defense pact against racism

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 14:34:59 GMT

A Twitter account called Black and Proud addresses white people:

Please stop saying 'I don't see color.' Instead -- I see you and your struggle, because of your skin color. I will stand with you to end racism.

I agree. Race is visible, and the statement that you don't see it is ludicrous. We see it. To say otherwise is to push it aside. I've written about this a few times before, once in an explainer about Black Lives Matter, and what it means, from a white person's perspective.

I want to do more. I feel compelled, not just to make life safer and simpler for people of color, but also to put up a roadblock to racism, to let it know that it will encounter resistance. Some things are better kept under cover. Racism for sure is one of them.

In the past I've proposed that we all wear Martin Luther King buttons. I felt his image was perfect because he's a black man, he preached non-violence, and was active, not passive, in his quest for equality and fairness. A white person wearing a MLK button makes a statement of equivalence. Treat me as you would treat a black person. If a majority of whites wore these buttons it would make a promise to our fellow citizens, that if there's trouble, we're standing with you. When there's trouble.

It would be like Article 5 in NATO. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. As a white person I can't become black. But I can make a statement that I stand with people of color.

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 22:06:39 GMT

Development of the RSS format didn’t peter out, it was frozen, so there could be as much interop as possible.

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 21:53:50 GMT

Five years ago Google Reader shut down. What went wrong? We centralized a decentralizing technology, and of course that eventually broke. Google had no incentive to keep RSS afloat because it couldn't be turned into a silo. It's like politics and journalism. We all have to do it if we want it to work. Independent developers should have worked together better. And users could have chosen independent developers over the single big company, which turned out to be the point of failure. If we want the world to work -- journalism, tech and politics, the people have to consider the big picture in our small picture choices.

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 18:08:54 GMT

Poll: Batman or Jesus, who would win?

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 12:51:33 GMT

The best defense against Putin and Trump is to teach every student the basics of journalism. Not just how to detect fake news, but how to write a news story. If we do it now, we'll be glad we did in a few years.

An art show in the web

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 17:27:33 GMT

Dear blog friends --

Here's an art show in your web browser.

http://artshow.scripting.com/

Leave it open for a bit, every ten seconds there's a new work of art.

I'm grabbing the art from the @artpicschannel Twitter feed. I loved having it on Twitter, I wondered what it would be like on its own. I love it even more.

I have an app running on my server that generates a static JSON file that the browser-based app reads. So you're not calling Twitter from the Art Show page, that's why you don't have to log on. It's more efficient this way.

Dave

PS: Here's the Art Show Howto.

Reclaiming RSS

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 15:27:43 GMT

Aral Balkan wrote recently about reclaiming RSS. He talks about rebooting feed discovery, as the browsers are abandoning it. There is a simple discovery mechanism for RSS feeds, a meta tag you can put into the HTML head section that tells anyone who cares where your feed is.

My site has one of these, of course -- this is what it looks like:

Balkan says (and I agree) it can't hurt to also link in the visible part of your page to your RSS feed, as I do here. I am thinking about doing that for my blog. There are links to my feeds in the About tab, but maybe I should make it more visible.

Actually there is a link to the RSS feed for this blog at the bottom of every page, along with a link to my Twitter, Facebook, GitHub and LinkedIn accounts.