So many things to write about this year, but I never make the time to do it. Hoping to break that trend in the next few weeks.

Whoa, I just leartned the Github iPad app allows you to edit files!

• Keychain fobs, the same size as a quarter, to use at Aldi.
• A decorative star to cover the large bolt on our adress plaque.
• An insert for Aerodrome, based on Gridfinity, to keep things organized.

Tonight, I started making some 1.5 cm furniture risers for our dressers and nightstands, so our Roomba (affectionally named Kylo), will stop hetting stuck under everything.

I’ll post more details on each project later.

The other rabbit trail I went down tonight was getting Jekyll running on my Mac, so I can preview posts before uploading them. I had already installed rbenv, but Ruby 2.7.4 wasn’t working with Jekyll 4.2.2. I found a few other blog posts on getting Jekyll running on Mac OS 14.2. (Ventura), but what finally worked was just a small tweak to the official install steps:

1. rbenv install 3.2.3
2. rbenv local 3.2.3
3. gem install bundler jekyll
4. bundle install

When trying to use Ruby 3.3.0 (the latest provided by rbenv as of this writing), jekyll-4.2.2 reports an error with Logger:

~/.rbenv/versions/3.3.0/lib/ruby/3.3.0/logger.rb:384:in `level': undefined method `[]' for nil (NoMethodError)

    @level_override[Fiber.current] || @level
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	from /Users/mason/GitHub/lib/ruby/3.3.0/gems/jekyll-4.2.2/lib/jekyll/log_adapter.rb:45:in `adjust_verbosity'

Using the slightly older Ruby resolved this problem. I’ll keep an eye out for a new release that resolves this issue.

I am currently subscribed to … far too many podcasts. They fall into a few general categories:

1. Economics (Behavioral and Macro)
2. Ficton
3. X-Wing
4. Science
5. Culture/Spirituality
6. History
7. Tech

I have found that podcasts are a great way for me to “learn by osmosis”. I have them on while I’m getting ready in the morning, walking the dog, driving, doing house or yard work, and when I’m oncall, burning down the ticket queue. I wouldn’t say they get 100% of my attention, but I do pick up little bits of information. I do think I am becoming a more well-rounded, informed person for it all.

So, in honor of International Podcast Day, I present ten podcasts I enjoy, that you may not be aware of. They are not presented in any particular order. I’ll also include links to recommended episodes.

1. The Past and The Curious

This is a monthly history Podcast, mostly for kids, but its such high quality, I think anyone would enjoy it. The creator, Mick Sullivan, works at the Frazier History Museum in Lexington, Kentucky. Each episode includes two stories or profiles, “Quiz Time”, and a song — sometimes an original composition. While the episodes may profile names you recognize, Mick finds parts of their stories you may not have heard before. The episodes are inclusive of many stories from around the world, too. Two episodes worth checking out:

• Episode 39 The Astronomer and the Photographer about Eadweard Muybridge and Tycho Brahe.
• Ep. 24: Shipwrecks! about Ida Lewis and Marquis de Lafayette.

2. Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Yes, that Alan Alda. Some day I’ll write a post about how certain TV characters from the 80s filled in for an absent father, but until then, sufice it to say that Hawkeye Pierce was one of those characters (particularly in the later seasons of MASH). Turns out, Alan Alda isn’t just a great actor, he was a major supporter of the ERA and a prolific science communicator. This podcast is an extension of his work at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Each episode, Alan interviews scientists, entertainers — or just whomever the heck he pleases! — and pulls such interesting details from them. He’s a warm, intentional interviewer, and I love listening to him. Two recent episodes I enjoyed, that you may, as well:

• Mayim Bialik: How Acting Led to Science and Science to Acting
• Robert Lefkowitz: A Soldier of Science

3. The Fitzroy Diaries

The is a little ficiton podcast from the Austrailian Broadcast Company. The protaginist is a suburban mom, going about her frantic life. There’s neighborhood intriegue, but nothing too dark, or edgy. Each episoide (usually) starts with her rattling off some little afirmation. It’s just kind of a slice of idealized normalicy. (I mean, who actually talks to all their neighbors?) They just released the third season, but I would recommend starting with season one.

4. Flash Forward

I have tried so many times to describe what this show is about, and never do it justice. It’s culture and science and futurism. For the longest time the show was produced soley by Rose Eveleth, but she has brought on an extra producer for the past few seasons. Rose takes a topic, makes some speculation of how that topic may play out in the future, and starts the episode with a small fictional pience to illustrate it. Then she interviews experts in the related fields to talk it through. I really appreciate that Rose find diverse voices for her peices. She makes a real effort to highlight how these futures will affect existing marginalized people, or what new marginilizations may be created. Two episodes to check out:

• Bot for Teacher This came out in June 2016, well before the hell that was school in 2020. While my kids didn’t have horrible experiences, I know there were plenty of kids out there that did, and I know that technology sure didn’t help. This episode (and the followup in February 2021) dive into what could have been and what we got.
• BODIES: InkRx Medical tatoos sound so cool, don’t they? A good dive into just what that could look like.

5. The Truth

Great storytelling with compelling voice actors. A little bit like The Twilight Zone. Most of the stories are one-offs, but there have been a four (so far) in a post-apocolyptic series called The Hum. Two episodes to check out:

• Into the Hum “When the sky itself becomes deadly, survival depends on how much you can trust strangers.” The second episode of the series.
• Poofed “After helping a woman on a subway platform, a busker discovers that her ukulele has a strange power.”

6. Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast

Andy Stanley is the lead pastor at North Point Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. Each month he discusses different methods for effective leadership, often with interviewing other leaders. Even if you aren’t religiuous, Andy has a lot of great advice, backed up by the successful organization he has built, by trusting, empowering, and empathizing with his teams. And his presentation is humble, no-nonsense and practical. Two episodes to check out:

The 5 Lies of Corporate Culture with Ginger Hardage, Part 1 and Part 2 Ginger Hardage was the SVP of culture at Southwest Airlines and is now the CEO of Ronald McDonald House.

7. Encyclopedia Womanica

A daily pdocast that highlights known, and not so well known, women from history. Each month has a theme (September 2021 was Educators). Such a great way to learn about amazing women who have shaped our lives, even if we didn’t know it. Three episodes I enjoyed:

• Maria Montessori
• Ida B. Wells
• Carol Burnette

8. Conversations with Tyler

I learned about Tyler Cown by way of NPR Planet Money. Tyler ends every interview with an “Under Rated / Over Rated” segment, which Planet Money appropriates (with permission) every once in a while. Tyler is an interesting interviewer: he does tons of research on his guests, asks in depth questions, yet unapologetically brings his own opinions and biases to the table. And his questions are rapid fire. I am learning a lot from this, a lot that I don’t agree with, but it’s not advesareal, so it is stretching my mind. I found these two recent episodes insightful:

• Amia Srinivasan on Utopian Feminism
• Niall Ferguson on Why We Study History

9. Meanwhile in Security

Many people know of Corey Quinn, the founder of The Duckbill Group and snarky “Cloud Economist” and that is very proficient at “punching up” with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. However, people may not of the new cloud security podcast also produced by The Duckbill Group, hosted by Jesse Trucks. Jesse does a great job of describing common computer security issues in an approachable way that I can understand.

10. Small Things Often

The Gottman Group has been a leader for years in researching what makes marriages and relationships work. Even if you are not married, or in any sort of romantic relationship, you are in some sort of relationship with someone, even if it’s just coworkers. These short episodes are great reminders of how to treat others, and yourself, with love and respect.

Bonus: X-Wing

X-Wing is a table top minatures game, developed originally by Fantasy Flight Games and now developed by Atomic Mass Games. In short, you push little plastic spaceships around a 3’ x 3’ mat for 75 minutes, rolling dice , flipping cards, and having a great time. I try to play once a week at my Friendly Local Game Store, Huzzah Hobbies.

Easily, most of my Podcast hours are spent on X-Wing Podcasts. I listen to the “big ones,” often one or two hours long, but I want to hlghlight two others that I really enjoy:

First, Worst Coast Children is produced by two teenagers in Southern California. They do so much more than talk about the game, but instead interview people that have done interesting things in X-WIng or people that have influenced them personally. They also have a few episodes talking about X-Wing and philosophy. It is really quirky, refreshing, and do I dare say optimistic.

Second, Radio TCX will cover new product releases, a little bit of tournament coverage, and some strategy talk. But best of all, unlike most other X-Wing podcasts, their episodes come in at 30 to 45 minutes.

I ran into quite a few errors: http-parser wouldn’t compile vexed me for the longest time. There were problems with libffi, as well. I came to the realization that my Home and RBEnv configurations were a combination of x86_64 and arm64. I also had Homebrew and RBEnv entries scattered across ~/.zlogin, ~/.zprofile, and ~/.zshrc. This is a case where a clean install of it all was the best course of action.

I came across a very helpful blog post from February. In it, Alex Manrique describes how to install everything to leverage Rosetta, Apple’s x86_64 emulation layer. While this is clever, I really wanted to get things working with native M1 code. Luckily brew has been hard at work getting things working for the M1.

This is how I got everything working.

1. Uninstalled Home from /usr/local with /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Home/install/HEAD/uninstall.sh)"
2. Deleted everything else under /usr/local, aside from BBEdit tools in /usr/local/bin
3. Deleted ~/.rbenv
4. Deleted ~/.zlogin, ~/.zprofile, and ~/.zshrc. Don’t worry, these files only had references to Home and RBEnv.
5. Re-installed Home using the default method.
6. Built a new .zprofile, and reloaded it (source ~/.zprofile): export SDKROOT=$(xcrun –show-sdk-path) eval “$(/opt/home/bin/ shellenv)” eval “$(rbenv init -)”
7. Installed rbenv from ` install rbenv. The documentation is ambiguous to how to add rbenv to the permanent environment; thus the .zprofile` above.
8. Installed Ruby 2.7.4: rbenv install 2.7.4; rbenv global 2.7.4. I’ll use a more specific version in my actual blog, but we need something to get going.
9. Lets make sure we are using rbenv: which ruby should be ~/.rbenv/shims/ruby and which gem should be ~/.rbenv/shims/gem.
10. gem update && rbenv rehash
11. gem install bundler && rbenv rehash: the Jekyll docs say to use --user-install, but that installs it outside of rbenv; not what we want.
12. gem install jekyll && rbenv rehash

Much better, no errors!

Now, to breath life back into the blog.

1. I checked out the blog from my GitHub repo. This already has a Jekyll setup, as I’ve been hosting it on GitHub Pages for a few years.
2. I created a scratch blog, to see what the latest Gemfile looked like, and updated the “real” Gemfile a bit; mostly providing specific version numbers for jekyll and minima.
3. from the repo, I ran the standard jekyll commands: bundle install && bundle exec jekyll serve.

And there we go, a local install of Jekyll. I know, this shouldn’t seem like a big deal, and it wasn’t, really. I just had to cleanup my local tools.

Next up, I’ll start working on a CloudFormation template.

I started reading through the S3 PUT Object, AWS SigV4, and Signature Calculations for the Authorization Header documents form AWS, as well as the Request your first API in Shortcuts on iPhone or iPad from Apple.

Things were looking promising, especiually when I saw that the “Generate Hash” Shortcut action supports SHA256! I figured, with enough tapping, typing, and swiping, I’d have a decent shortcut in no time. With a little extra polish, it would be something to share with the world.

Unfortunatley, I need HMAC_SHA256, so I can seed the hash with various keys. Nothing in Shortcuts seems to provide this. Roadblock Number One.

Then, looking through the Shortcut Actions, I found the Run JavaScript on Webpage Action. Could I web-pack the aws-s3 API into a helper for Shortcuts? Short answer, no. This action can only be run on web pages, and only from Safari’s Share Sheet. Roadblock Number Two.

I think Shortcuts just isn’t the right tool for the job. For the short-term , I can upload through the AWS/S3 Console from an iPad. Longer-term, I’ll build an admin console into the blog itself, support Create, Replace, Update and Delete (CRUD) for the Inbound Bucket.

1. Upload posts and images to an Inbound S3 bucket.
2. This kicks off Jekyll, running in Lambda, which writes out the website to an Outbound bucket.
3. Front the Outbound Bucket with CloudFront.

I want to have a full CI / CD pipeline, where I can:

1. Preview posts that are tagged as ‘draft’ (these posts won’t go to the live Outbound Bucket).
2. Preview and validate template and CSS changes.
3. Preview and validate new versions of Jekyll or plugins.

I saw that AWS CodeStar is designed help with “creating, managing, and working with software development projects on AWS,” so I thought I would give it a shot. I dove into Setting Up AWS CodeStar:

1. Made an IAM Role ‘aws-codestar-service-role’ with one clock from CodeStar Console.
2. Switched to the IAM Console so I could attach the ‘AWSCodeStarFullAccess’ policy to my IAM User.
3. Back to the CodeStar console to click “Create Project.”
4. I did not choose a template, none of them matched what I want.
5. Named it Jekyll Engine
6. Asking for an Amazon Developer Account? I linked to my root account. I hope this is right?
7. Asking for an Amazon Vendor Account? Where do I set that up?
8. Went to developer.amazon.com, logged in with my root account credentials, finished setting up profile, including setting up a company name.
9. Restarted the Codestar Project setup, now I see my vendor account.
10. At the confirmation screen, I see that I did select a template: “Hello World” Alexa / node.js. That Alexa bit would explain why it wanted a developer account and vendor ID.
11. Backed out to the template selection screen to see if anything fit. The “Static Website” tempalte wants to host on EC2 instances — not S3 buckets — so this isn’t going to work.

I would have liked to have tried CodeStar, but I don’t want to use a template if I’m going to have to unwind the majority of the work it does for me. Instead, I’ll start building out a CloudFormation template, from scratch. More on that later.

Maybe these are small things, but in combination, they are frustrating enough to turn me off from Apple Podcasts (AP):

1. AP uses the word “Station” instead of “Playlist”. Maybe this shouldn’t matter, but Apple Music uses “Stations” for algorithmically-generated lists, and “Playlists” for user-defined lists. When I see “Stations” in Podcasts, I immediately think “I don’t want to listen to what you think I want to listen to, I want to listen to my own dang podcats, thank you very much.”
2. Just look at this popup. What is the difference between “Add To Library” and “Save Episode”? And why is there a “Remove Download” option? Why did you download it if I haven’t saved it or added it to my Library?
3. So. Much. Clicking. I guess, to see older episodes it’s the same amount of clicks, but AP uses text links in the middle of the screen, while Overcast uses headers at the top.
4. The “Play at One and a Quarter Speed” option in AP doesn’t sound very good.

There are two key things that really make Overcast shine:

1. The sound is great. I default to using Smart Speed, Voice Boost and running at 1.33 speed, and all the shows are still very understandable.
2. Being able to set “Priority Pdocasts” in a playlist is wonderful. I have a single playlist (titled ‘Casts’), that includes everything. I have 20 Priority Podcasts (ten X-Wing, six news, two science and two miscellaneous) that will jump to the top of the queue as soon as they come in.

If you are an avid Podcast listener on an iPhone or iPad, you should give Overcast a try. Originally it was $4.99, but went to freemium / ads a few years ago. You can kill ads for $10/year. I know, it an era of free that seems like a ridiculous amount to pay. But Overcast — the app, the back-end — it is all managed by one person. Paying Marco $10 a year for an app that doesn’t track you and has a clean interface, that’s a bargain to me.

I did go social cold turkey a few months ago. It was just bringing me down, and stressing me out. The only healthy interactions I was having was in the Huzzah X-Wing Messenger Group. I didn’t want to give up that group, but that was the baby that went out with the bath water. This was fine, I felt better, but I hadn’t really given up FB. Miriam was still there, and if I needed something posted to a freecycle group, she’d do it for me. If someone shared important family news, she passed it on. I hadn’t quit social media, I outsourced it.

So, I’m back on FB. Checking with the X-Wing group, skimming to see what people are up to, emoting on posts that tickle the brain just so. I haven’t posted anything, aside from a dumb joke to the Make Me Smart Podcast Group. I suspect my postings will be limited to freecycling, emoting, and posting links to this here blog.

Posting to social media feels performative. I rarely feel that my comments on someone’s post are going to add value. I feel similar about any original posts … am I saying anything worth saying?

With a blog, I’m not competing for your attention. I can take as long as I like to develop a thought. And there are no Like Buttons for me to obsess over.

There is also some level of data sovereignty. While the blog is currently hosted on GitHub, it’s my data, and I can move it wherever I want. This is far more idealistic than practical, but it matters to me.

Finally, there are a few writing projetcs I want to tackle, and a blog may be just the right tool for it. One project is a series of short fictions, inspired by favorite songs. The other project is podcast reviews.

But why write at all? Why a blog? I have ideas I want to develop. I want to write better. I want to feel like I am making something. And I want to share it with people!

Thanks for sticking with me this far, and I hope to give you something worth reading.

P.S. If you’d like to comment, you can email me, or react to what ever social media post led you here. I’ll do my best to respond.

I’ll be spending some time next week working out my goals. And I’ll be posting some thoughts and commitments here. There certainly is something to making goals public. First, a level of vulnerability. I’m admitting to my weaknesses. Second is the level of accountability, if anyone is actually reading this.

And why the on-again/off-again blogging? I feel a need to write. To share some of what is going on in my life. And I don’t want to do that on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. So, here I am.

I do have some fun, learn some tech skills plans for this blog. Stay tuned for that.

But, to put it simply, we just don’t play enough games to be very good. Really, we play maybe two games a month. At the last store tournament, I asked someone “so how much would you say you play in a month?” His response was “not much, I play here (Huzzah), at Island, at (some store in Maryland), maybe another pickup game at (some other store). I watch a lot of streams and I play Fly Casual against the AI when I’m watching TV.” That’s an awful lot for “not much.”

I have a dumb little goal to “get better at X-Wing”. To make that SMART Goal, that may be a little more like “I’d like to win a Store Championship by September 2019.” To make that happen, I am going to have to log a lot more games. And most of that will have to be on Vassal or Fly Casual. I’ll be setting a weekly goal of hours played in the next few weeks.

Second Edition feels like a decent place to start fresh in the game. A lot of the mechanics and meta have been cleaned up, and it should be much more a game of positioning and strategy. I’m also excited by the Escalation Format … I hope it give people (like me) an opportunity to compete without having to dump a lot of money into the game. I mean, I’ll buy one of each ship, a few more of the swarmy ships, but I’m not going to buy three Lambdas or whatever.

I am a bit conflicted on this “goal.” It’s very frivolous. It doesn’t make the world a better place. It doesn’t make me healthier. It doesn’t increase the time I spend with my family. It doesn’t make me better at my job. Yet, it’s fun. Even though I stink, I really enjoy pushing little plastic spaceships around a table. This will be my one “splurge” goal for the time being. In the next few weeks I’ll be setting some other goals, and possibly documenting them here.