Jim Willis

  • dowpy – WordPress Posts to Day One

    I write private journal entries and public journal entries. The public ones get posted here. I had been looking for a way to get those public entries into Day One so then when I’m reviewing the “On this date…” feature of the app, I see not only my private Day One journal entries but also my WordPress posts from that date. First step was to bulk import all of my old WordPress posts (20+ years, crazy).

    Next up was to find some way to make sure that new WordPress posts somehow got auto-imported into my Day One journal. Enter dowpy: a python script that pulls new WordPress entries into Day One.

    I’ve had this script up and running for a few weeks now without error so figure it’s time to share it in case anyone else has a similar use case.

    I run this via cron on my Mac. It grabs the ATOM feed of my website and pulls in new entries into a Day One Journal called, surprise, “WordPress Entries.”

    https://github.com/sjimwillis/dowpy

    For it to work you’ll probably want to:

    • make sure it runs daily
    • make sure to have full entries in your feed and not just excerpts
    • it only pulls in what’s in your feed (so, if you want pages as well as posts in your feed you’ll need to make some changes to the stock WP feed)
    • it only pulls in what’s in your feed, so if you want to backfill older posts to get caught up (I pulled in about 20 years of my older posts), read How to Bulk Import Posts into Day One.

    It does a good enough job at handling links and images, though not perfect. I should also note that Apple really doesn’t want you to use cron. They want you to use launchd instead. I will spin up a config file for launchd when I get some time as that would allow the script to run even if my machine is asleep, which would be nice.

  • Why Federate?

    Over at Dave Winer’s Scripting News, Dave makes the case that federation and interop of social media is maybe the wrong move. I think in some cases it may be. Thinking a lot about why and what I write here, it’s rarely because I want to engage in conversation but because I want to share (knowledge, inspiration, whatever). That’s different than conversation.

    I have built so much on top of RSS and so much of that is due to Dave Winer. I do see ActivityPub as something like a two-way RSS feed, but maybe not every internet destination needs a two-way flow?

    For a news or community site, well, social media interoperability and conversation may be just the ticket. Anyway, Dave’s post is a good one:

    http://scripting.com/2023/12/13.html#a135218

  • Re-listening

    In just a few weeks of self-hosing a Navidrome server that I’ve also made accessible from outside my house, I’ve noticed a significant shift in my listening habits. I’m doing so much more re-listening to albums in my collection than when listening to Apple Music.

    Apple Music often leaves me with a sense of FOMO – there’s always something else or new to listen to, making it rare to listen to the same album twice. Contrast that to my Navidrome box which has about 150 CDs or so. The collection is growing, slowly.

    Each week, I’m enjoying hunting for cheap used CDs to rip that will fill holes in my collection. I’m finding that after I rip a CD and load it up into Navidrome, it appears under the “Recent Albums,” section that I default to. And so I end up listening to those albums a few times a week. It’s a completely different experience to listen to the same few albums over and over throughout the week. I can’t remember ever doing that with Apple Music.

    I’ve still got my Apple Music account to support listening on our house full of HomePods, but between Navidrome and Play:Sub, I’m really enjoying digging into a collection of music that I own. Some of these albums I’ve had for ages and it’s great to revisit them like old friends. (I’ve got on a Cannonball Adderley album that’s been in my collection for probably 30 years at this point—it’s amazing how quickly I can recall his solos on certain cuts).

    A quick tip for my future self and other users: If Navidrome stops syncing with last.fm, simply navigate to the profile->personal link in the upper right corner to troubleshoot.

  • ChatGPT and “Humanities Types”

    In his latest issue of galaxy brain, Charlie Warzel dismisses the value of ChatGPT in part because he’s unable to see the value or potential. of ChatGPT, because the ability to control or drive value from the tool is outside the grasp of most humanities types.

    A good ChatGPT whisperer understands how to sequence commands in order to get a machine to do its bidding. That’s a genuine skill, but one that eludes me as well as some other humanities types I know. The best ChatGPT prompters I know tend to be good systems thinkers or at least well-organized people—the kind who might create a series of automated protocols and smart-home integrations to turn their lights on and off. I’m the guy who sees romance in wandering around in the dark, bumping into a coffee table, to find the switch.

    I would argue that “humanities types” are some of the most well-positioned to be able to exploit the value of chat, GPT, and other large language models. Humanities types as he refers to them, understand language and its power of precise language more than most. The ability to construct exactly the right language or prompt is one of the key skills needed to extract value from chat, GPT.

  • Matthew Effect

    Trying to track down the origin of a quote this morning, I learned about something called the Matthew Effect, inspired by this verse from the Bible:

    For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. – Matthew 13:12

    Coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1968, it describes the phenomenon where recognition and success are more likely to be bestowed upon those already distinguished, reinforcing their status. This concept, particularly relevant in science and academia, notes that well-known scientists often receive disproportionate credit for their work compared to lesser-known counterparts, even if their contributions are of equal importance.

    This leads to a cycle where established figures gain increasing recognition and resources, exacerbating disparities in visibility and success. The Matthew effect extends beyond academia into fields like economics and information dissemination, reflecting the broader impact of social and professional networks on career advancement and recognition. It also highlights the challenges faced by emerging talents in gaining acknowledgment and success.

    Noting here because it has so many implications, it’s something that I had a sense of but now that I have a term for, I’ll be more aware of.

  • AI Art and Traditional Illustration

    Recently, I’ve come across discussions online debating the role of AI-generated visuals in the art world. Some argue that AI poses a threat to professional illustrators and advocate for its limited use in creative processes. While I understand these concerns, I’m trying to understand my perspective a bit here, and I’d like to explore this through an analogy.

    I’m thinking specifically about the advent of synthesizers and sampling in music, which perhaps parallels the emergence of AI in visual arts. This comparison highlights a dynamic tension between tradition and innovation, and between human creativity and technological assistance.

    Personally, my preference runs towards the sounds of acoustic guitar. However, this preference doesn’t lead me to dismiss music that incorporates sampling or synthesized elements*. While I’m not convinced that these technologies have inherently enhanced music’s quality, they have expanded the creative toolkit available to artists. Music rich in synths and samples, to me, exists in a universe distinct from universe I inhabit when I strum my Martin guitar.

    AI-generated art, like synthesized music and sampling, opens up new creative avenues that might be unattainable through traditional methods. Almost certainly AI will impact the livelihoods of some artists, similar to how synths and sampling reshaped the music industry. But it’s important to recognize that these technologies also democratize creativity, enabling more individuals (for better or worse and with widely varying degrees of artistic quality) to express themselves.

    I believe that mastery in music should require the ability to create great music without relying on synths or samples. Likewise, artistic greatness probably shouldn’t rely completely on generative AI. Art and music should foster inclusivity and diversity and they should celebrate individual creativity and autonomy. For me they should not require an over-reliance on technology but that’s not to say it shouldn’t be a tool in toolbox.

    *I have an album that I’m working on releasing of mostly synthesizer music, so, again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong about synths or sampling.

  • Hey Siri/Shortcut Automation with 2023 Outback

    I am not a big fan of the Subaru app. It’s janky but does offer a way to remote start my car. But, as the days are getting colder, I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to be able to tell my bathroom HomePod Hey Siri, Warm up my car. So over lunch today, I managed to cook up some shortcuts to start/pre-heat, stop & lock my 2023 Outback.

    I’ll also note here that I am confirming that this does in fact work with the ‘23s as some folks on the Subaru formus were having problems but those problems are not related to the model year.

    Obligatory Dall-e Outback/Apple art

    You need to make sure to get your deviceid AS WELL AS your PIN entered in to the shortcut.

    Good instructions for getting your deviceid found here from https://www.subaruoutback.org’s TheyDroppedMe but I’m pasting below because I have no faith that anything linked to on the internet will be here tomorrow:

    First of all, you’ll need to use the Chrome browser on a desktop for this.

    1) Open chrome and go to www.mysubaru.com/login (DON’T login yet! If you’re already logged in, log out and go back to the login page)
    2) Right click on the page and select the inspect option at the bottom. This should open the chrome dev tools in a frame to the side or bottom of the tab.
    3) On the top bar of the dev tools section, you should see options like Elements, Console, Sources, Network, etc. Select the Network tab (you may have to scroll over to see it). Once in the Network tab, click the Preserve log checkbox.
    4) Now on the mysubaru web page next to the dev tools, enter your login information and login. You should see a flurry of activity in the Network tab
    5) Scroll down in the left-hand column in the Network tab until you see an entry named login and select that. On the box to the right of that column, select the Payload tab and you should see some data under Form Entries that contains your vehicle ID, device ID, username, and password

    Once you have your deviceid you can follow some of the advice in this reddit link where you can also download my edited template.

    Parameters

    Importantly there are different URL components for the different services:

    • engineStart
    • engineStop
    • lock
    • unlock

    It’s been really nice to not have to use the super-tedious Subaru application. I already the Hey Siri, warm up my car before heading out to the gym this afternoon. So cool.

  • Apple (country) Music Genres

    I’m not really sure that I use genre information too much in organizing my library, but that’s not to say that I don’t want it to be correct when it’s applied.

    My years working in the classical music world taught me how painfully insufficient existing music metadata tagging is for classical music — e.g. movements and composers and conductors matter a lot and are such a challenge in Apple Music that Apple released a classical-only app that admittedly does a really decent job handling the complexity of classical music metadata.

    As I’ve been ripping some legacy CDs into lossless over to my Navidrome box, I’m laughing at the default tags applied to the CDs as they’re ripped. Everything from Emmylou Harris to Asleep at the Wheel to the Stanley Brothers gets categorized as “Country & Folk” which is crazy.  Western Swing which isn’t even an option in Apple Music. I’m not saying Country has the same attribute complexity as classical, but from an organization/genre perspective there are definitely some nuances that could be captured better out of the gate.

    From what I can tell, Apple uses Gracenote to pull in metadata and genre info. MusicBrainz gets a bit closer, calling the Bob Wills tribute album “Country” with the default scan and does offer the ability to customize how genres are handled. I could choose to include or exclude certain genres, or set it to only use specific genre tags.

    Might need to bake these in to Apple Music/Navidrome:

    • Bluegrass
    • Bluegrass/Country Gospel
    • Traditional Country
    • Honky Tonk
    • Outlaw Country
    • Country Rock
    • Country Pop
    • Western Swing
    • Rockabilly
    • Cajun and Zydeco

    The real question though is what to do with what the Country Music establishment refers to as “Americana” which is really Country, whereas the “Country” pushed by the Country Music establishment is best defined as bro-Country or maybe jingo-Country?

  • Original Music Links

    Experimenting with Linode, S3 storage and Nextcloud to see if I can find an easy way to link to music I want to share.

    While bluegrass, country and Dead are my primary musical outlets, I like to switch gears (ha, that’s funny in a way that will be clear in a minute) and play with synthesizers and drum machines.

    I am a huge fan of the show High Maintenance and love the shots where the the Guy is riding his bike to sound of low-fi electronic music as I, too, love to listen to electronic music when I ride my bike around town. So I switch gears from acoustic music and fiddle around with making electronic music. Here’s a sample

    Note, this hasn’t been mastered or anything so volume may be weak.

    Curious to see how functional this link is. Do you find it easy to download if you want? Or is it ok just to make it streamable?

  • Researching ABLE accounts with ChatGPT4

    Spent my lunch hour researching ABLE accounts with ChatGPT4. Overall positive experience (I sanity-checked the results). Some interesting findings:

    The average annual maintenance fee for ABLE accounts, considering a range of states, is approximately $42.67. This is based on the fees of several states, which generally range from $35 to $60.

    NJ’s program offers ZERO tax incentives for NJ residents.

    Virginia’s ABLEnow has no opening fee and waives the monthly fee if you maintain a $10k balance.

    Accessing funds is an important feature, Virginia’s ABLEnow program has a debit card as well as no monthly fees.

    The ABLEnow program offers several investment options for account holders:

    Aggressive Growth Portfolio: This portfolio invests entirely in the Vanguard LifeStrategy Growth Fund. It primarily allocates its assets to common stocks (about 80%) and bonds (about 20%), making it suitable for account holders with a higher risk tolerance​​.

    Moderate Growth Portfolio: This portfolio is invested in the Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund. The allocation here is approximately 60% in common stocks and 40% in bonds, offering a balance between growth and income​​.

    Conservative Income Portfolio: This portfolio focuses on the Vanguard LifeStrategy Income Fund. It is more conservative, with about 80% of its assets in bonds and 20% in common stocks, catering to those who prefer lower risk​​.

    Money Market Portfolio: This option invests in the Fidelity Investments Money Market Government Portfolio. It’s a very low-risk option, with at least 99.5% of the fund’s total assets in cash, U.S. Government securities, and fully collateralized repurchase agreements​​.

Current Spins

Top Albums

Check out my album Set It All Down on your favorite streaming service.

Posts Worth Reading:

Free Internet vs Internet of Free Stuff

Letterboxd

Reading Notes

  • Read: Manufactured Anxiety: How Self-Improvement Became a Self Destruct Sequence
    Who profits from our constant state of dissatisfaction? The answer, of course, is painfully obvious. Every industry that sells a solution to a problem you […]
  • Read: My Friends Aren’t Reading
    the shifts have been in place for awhile. A certain kind of book—say those reviewed in the NYRB—will become like opera, or theater, or ballet, […]
  • Read: Pema Chödrön’s Three Methods for Working with Chaos
    • No more struggle: “Whatever arises, train again and again in seeing it for what it is. The innermost essence of mind is without bias. […]
  • Read: The Tech Coup
    . The EU invokes a mechanism called the precautionary principle in cases where an innovation, such as GMOs, has not yet been sufficiently researched for […]
  • Read: Why Not Bluesky
    The real problem, in my mind, isn’t in the nature of this particular Venture-Capital operation. Because the whole raison-d’etre of Venture Capital is to make […]

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