Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Author: Ianforrester
Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser.
Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io
Also been thinking about dating, as I edit my book. Its clear to me my thoughts of the dating industry’s endemic corruption is still valid but if I apply enshittification it fits perfectly and is very descriptive of the problem.
New platforms offer useful products and services at a loss, as a way to gain new users.
Its clear the social dating apps changed everything for many people. People can’t even imagine signing up to a site without the app now.
Once users are locked in, the platform then offers access to the userbase to suppliers at a loss, and once suppliers are locked-in, the platform shifts surpluses to shareholders.
Indeed, you can see this in the type of adverts you see in and outside the apps. Interestingly don’t forget they are collecting even more date everytime its used or to be fair is learning more about your use of the phone if you gave it the permissions its requested.
Once the platform is fundamentally focused on the shareholders, and the users and vendors are locked in, the platform no longer has any incentive to maintain quality.
Bingo, so many people tell me how Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, etc, etc… quality has gone down.
We all know its not going to get any better… Welcome to enshittification
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“
Ian thinks: You may have heard of “Pig Butchering” in relation to romance/crypto scams. In this pretty dark episode of Darknet diaries which deals with violence, scams and death. You realised how deep and dark the scams go.
Ian thinks: I have noticed a general exhaustion/ignorance to the problem of bias in AI. This short video from Channel 4 is a timely reminder of how it manifests and for us all to take some responsibility.
Ian thinks: The post office scandal is simply awful all over. People have lost the faith of their communities, family and even lost their lives. All due to a not fit for purpose computer system (Fujitsu’s Horizon). What makes things worst is all the people who sided with the computer system over the huge evidence of the post office masters/mistresses. Also interesting it took a TV show to push the whole scandal into the public conscious.
Ian thinks: I liked this for many reasons but the distraction technique used by many people who con others is somewhat clear to see across a lot of the AI stories I see. I did wonder if I was the only one?
Ian thinks: The podcast industry is feeling the pinch due to advertisers wanting to know more about the listener. Spotify’s has always offered a closed platform and rejected RSS for this reason. However, Apple will start supporting the open Podcast namespace around transcripts.
Ian thinks: I recently shared this video with a few people who have started drinking the cool-aid about privacy is over. Its something of a timely reminder at the top of the year, of the importance of privacy for everyone.
Ian thinks: I recently read the hype machine by Sinan Aral. I expected most of the points but I did find the influence on society points, stronger than I imagined. The depth of the arguments are worthy of reading and of course acting on.
Ian thinks: There is renew interest in new/alternative user interfaces and although AI is all the rage, our smartphones are fighting back (as the video shows). When I think about this all, I can’t help but wonder about the infrastructure. Leaning on Human Data Interaction guidelines, many of them mask the data from the human.
Ian thinks: Congrats to Cory on a word which sums up so much about the current internet business model but also doing something about it. I remember Cory being quite critical of surveillance capitalism and emphasising the problem of monopolies, lack of agency and interoperability.
Something I have been talking about a long time ago, is what Perceptive media could bring to the in-car experience. Also MBUX sound drive is something which could easily be done with the open sourced Adaptive podcast app if you write a connection to the car sensor…
It was quite a watch and as the title indicates, there was a lot of thoughts about not just the big chocolate companies but the whole industry and the reliance on child slave labour. I posted about it on the Fediverse because I felt it was well worth watching with a warning
When the Raspberry Pi 5 was announced, I had added a task to look at replacing my quad core Intel Celeron with it. The specs looked perfect for a living room media system. I had already invested in a Nvidia quad HDMI PCIe 1x card to fit into the current box, struggled to get the drivers working on Ubuntu but then it all just stopped.
I tried to replace the PSU but it didn’t work. Its been ages since I really built a PC so in the end, decided rather than I should complete that task and bought a 8gig Raspberry Pi 5 from cool components.
Today I set it up in a few hours complete with LibreELEC.
I’m going to get a new case because the basic case is so so for what I’m trying to add to it. It also looks a bit lost in such a big space under the TV. But I’m looking forward to seeing it run 4k H.265 HVEC across my TV and projector. Of course I would need to finally upgrade my first generation smart TV first.
Update progress
This has been quite a journey.
I’m adding this information for anyone else who is thinking of doing similar. I still have a Raspberry Pi 5 running Kodi under my TV but I had to do a lot and only today somewhat happy. To be clear I installed the stable libreelec 32bit ARM as its seemed easy and good enough. I switched to the nightly edition 64bit ARM version. Tried installing OSMC (decided against this for lack of updates and Raspberry Pi 5 support looks a long way off) and finally installed the official Raspberry PI image/Raspbian and installed Kodi within that.
Dual display output running Kodi to my TV and Projector?
I seen many examples of people running displays next to each other at 4k and some high refresh rate. So assumed it would be possible across my TV and projector. Heck its mirrored so it should be easier right? No its not possible using Libreelec at all. I got it working in Raspbian but failed to get Kodi to mirror at all. After lots of research it seemed the much easier way to do this is with a HDMI splitter. I ended buying this one, which does exactly what I needed even if it requires a USB port for power.
AC3, DTS, multichannel sound output?
This one really kicked me where it hurts. I assumed I could finally get all those multichannel sound formats to my Onkyo 7.1 surround sound receiver over HDMI. I can get Dolby Digital/AC3 but when I plugged it directly into my receiver, the TV kept turning off as there was a issue where the remote inputs were not being transferred to the TV via the receiver. I considered turning off any standby options but there was worst to come.
I found it extremely easy to make many versions across multiple SD cards and simply swap them out. For example just 2 days there was a release which looks good, so I’ll likely just make another SD card and copy my files to the home directory.
Generally its working now and I assume it will get better as development grows around the Raspberry Pi 5.
Another update
I found out the problem with the TV standby comes from the CEC adapter, which is installed as default on the Raspberry Pi but not on my previous built Kodibox. I was able to disable it via the Setting > System > Input > Peripherals > CEC adapter. Because this is now working, I have the Raspberry Pi 5 plugged directly into the Onkyo receiver and also plugged in the Chromecast.
Once the HDMI audio is sorted, I can finally remove the external sound card and may consider moving the HDMI splitter to the output of the receiver but need to work out how this would effect the Freeview HD output on the TV’s HDMI return channel path/arc. Although to be fair my antenna has not worked in months if not a year.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Ian thinks: This short video from one of the Netherlands public broadcasters, highlights the big problem parents and new children have when it comes to social media and the internet. The punch line weighs heavy in minds afterwards.
Ian thinks: Although this is mainly focused on the American market, its concerning and a sign of the commercialisation of everything possible. I naively thought the well established laws around libraries would apply but obviously not. Maybe they should!
Ian thinks: Following on from the previous link, reading the experience of students again in the states is simply terrifying from a privacy point of view. Like schools, a number of companies have come in at such a low price to collect as much data as possible in return for little. I don’t even think some of the universities are fully aware of the bigger problem? The case for University is eroding away every day, sadly.
Ian thinks: There has been a number of news stories about the hostile problem of online streaming and subscription of digital goods. I found Wendy’s related post honest and realistic.
Ian thinks: The Omni-Surveillance society wants more data, and all those driving licences are a rich store of data. Will this bill go through? I’m unsure but honestly I’m conscious of how far you can get with “think about the children”.
Ian thinks: In this TEDx talk, Shani outlines what she did for her local area to encourage people to build a community. Its a wonderful talk and points to just enough internet rather than centring it. Just wonderful.
Ian thinks: Andy Yen, answers question for 2 hours and some of them are cutting and tricky. I know its a long time for most people but you really get a sense of Proton’s future and their part in the public service internet. Well worth turning on and mainly listening to.
Ian thinks: Most people care less about online dating and don’t see the connection with the public service internet. However this video demonstrates the almost complete monopoly of the Match group, buying new platforms as they pop their heads up. This is critical with a pandemic of loneliness across the developed world.
Ian thinks: Podcasting is going through a rough time with advertising recently. FLOSS weekly is another one ending. However its a great final episode and all 761 episodes makes a great archive documenting the many projects and achievements from the FLOSS community over the last 17 years.
Digital nomad things
This is the make or break year I think. I need to move things forward as time is going by quickly and i’m not getting younger. My next step is a meeting with the Portuguese embassy to clarify the tax side of things. An official note could make all the difference.
Finish my dating book
Its been way too long and its so close now, as mentioned in the review of last year.I have all the illustrations now except the front cover (but have plans). I also formatted the latest version into the 8×5 inch book format using templates, added the illustrations and shared it with a selected few. I await there comments over the festive season, then another check and final look at by Hannah.So I’m expecting some changes but its well on its way now. This year I’m looking into self publishing alternatives to Amazon KDP. But I don’t see any problem with a printed and ebook version by the end of the 2024.
Head even further a field with the scooter
I still need to get the scooter out to mainland Europe, ideally 2024 is a good time before things change with visas, etc.
Learn to drive a car
There are times when a car would be helpful and now with the drive towards electric cars and automatic drive. Its just a matter of doing the theory test again and then booking lessons.
Listen to two Audiobooks every month
I have been listening to one a month, but its time to push for two a month. Its quite a push but I think its worthy of the push I think.
Go to a new country
Its been long and there is a lot of Europe I haven’t visited, plus I have friends in those places I could easily visit. Although there is a temptation to visit some of the places again with my partner, new places do bring a new experiences.
Go to a new Rollercoaster park
A regular resolution but a good one and if I head to another country, its certainly high on the list.
Take the Diabolo skills up another level
I’m doing some exciting things with the diabolo but I really need to see some of the tricks done in person. YouTube is good but to really get a grip of the advanced tricks I need to meet other people doing the diabo lo.
Next year its time to meet more of them and learn those tricks like the infinite suicide!
Move over to privacy preserving protocols and platform
I am more and more annoyed at the business models of the majority of services out there. Cory frames it perfectly as enshittification and it’s frankly not on. Although this raises a bunch of questions about data portability (something I was deeply involved in, a long time ago regardless of what Wikipedia says) I need to just move! The alternatives are not only good enough in some places (tasks) but far better (like the fediverse). I will keep the old services but by the end of the year move over.
I’m also going to lean more on my blog more to bring things back into one place, for example why isn’t my bookwrym account not attached to my blog? Its also a good way to do collections, rather than this type of thing.
Separate out my food waste In most of the UK, food waste is separated from the rest. Just like how we recycle paper/card and some plastics. However as I live in a set of flats, Manchester Council tried to make us separate our food waste too. This was great because my main bin stopped smelling and I had to empty it a lot less. However the community bin for food recycling in the flat basement was full of different things because people kept emptying in plastic and other things into it. In the end Manchester council stopped food waste collection and we stopped food recycling (sadly).
So my thought is to keep on doing it but empty the food waste inside decomposable plastic bags into the main community bins. Its not ideal but I think separating the waste is generally a good thing. Its a good habit and who knows maybe I’ll find a food waste bin to empty them into later.
Start to mark out significant moments in my history One of the things I have done when mentoring as an exercise, is pull out key part of my/their life to help pick out key things which helped and hindered.
It a great little way to help understand your life and paths going forward. But I always found different ways to illustrate them using categories/layers to hide personal, work, etc.
Then recently I discovered Your life in weeks, which got looking around and finding a bunch of apps/webappsusing the concept. This got me thinking about codifying key moments in life in a more neutral format. Ideally this would be XML but alas markdown will work better than CSV?
See more of my friends
My friends are diverse, interesting and are great to be around. During the Covid pandemic, I would call them up on the off chance and have some incredible conversations. It was amazing and some went on for 4 hours.
I’m going to next year catch up with more of my friends I haven’t seen in years. Be it on the phone, online, in person, what ever works.
2023 has been a super busy year. This is the year when the United Kingdom and the freedoms we held tightly fell a part. Like last year the strikes haven’t stopped and the cost of living crisis isn’t going anywhere.
From a Quantified Self data point of view 2023 looked like this (worth noting its harder to get the data from some of the services)
My average sleep duration has dropped from 7hours 30mins to 6hours 20mins. Deep sleep stayed at 2.40hrs.
Been to a few places in 2023 but no new countries. Although I have to say 15 days in the Netherlands was incredible and glad I could do that (even with Easyjet troubles and Rotterdam rail problems). This year I went to; Manchester, Lisbon, Newport, London, Bristol, Bath, Weston, Newcastle, Gateshead, Huddlesfield, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Zwolle, York, Ledbury, Birmingham, Lancaster, Durham, Barcelona, Stoke on Trent and Alton.
According to Trakt (which had a database problem recently), my most played show is Traitors (which sounds about right when you add UK, AUS, NZ, USA and Canada) Film wise for highest rating it was Oppenheimer and Spiderman: across the spider-verse..
Most listened to podcast is Daily Tech News Show with podnews just behind that.
I watched 154 movie and 297 hours of TV, mainly while doing other things.
Combining a number of the previous digital nomad things
I really need to understand the tax side of a digital nomad from the business point of view as an employee of a large company not a freelancer. With this knowledge I can build the solid business case for being a digital nomad for a year.
This has moved forward a little bit. There is a interest at work and I have a plan to visit the Portuguese embassy in Manchester when I can finally get an appointment (they open the appointments every 3 weeks and seem to go very quickly). It will cost a bit of money but it will be worth it if I can get the answer to the tax question from an official.
Finish my dating book
The book is being worked on and some are suggest I’m a lot closer than I think . The book has structure, being edited, I have illustrations and even decided to use mid-journey for the cover. After reaching out to many agents and publishers with not much success I decided self-publishing is the way to go. I’m setting myself 2023 as the year to finally do this.
This is moving forwarded, I have all the illustrations now except the front cover (but have plans). I also formatted the latest version into the 8×5 inch book format using templates, added the illustrations and shared it with a selected few. I await there comments over the festive season, then another check and final look at by Hannah.
There is still work to be done but its getting closer to self publishing status and I expect 2024 will be the year it goes to epub/print.
I’m planning to go the Amazon self publish route but I’m keen to know about better routes, as I’m not keen on Amazon’s licence agreement.
Head even further a field with the scooter
2022 I didn’t go as far as 2021 but, I am up for driving on the scooter either up through Scotland or finally Netherlands and Belgium. 2023 has to be the year.
This is another year with less scooter driving. Although its worth noting I spent a lot of time flying which wasn’t the plan post pandemic. I did look at the train multiple times but the price between Manchester and London is always a killer on price and time. (Don’t get me started about HS2)
Hopefully next year I’ll finally drive to the Netherlands instead of flying or getting the train.
Learn to drive a car
Its also time, I’m not ever going to buy a car but being able to rent one for trips to IKEA and for longer journeys when the weather isn’t great makes sense. Its super clear the weather is going to get more extreme and being able to rent a car is more sensible. The other side of this is I can actually drive a car and passed my theory test with flying colours a long time ago (of course I need to do it again)..
Not even started this but its something I keep thinking about, as hiring a car for certain journeys would be handy. Especially with my partner Although I did buy some panniers for my scooter, to carry even more stuff when on longer journeys (like potentially Europe)
Listen to a Audiobook at least once a month.
This worked out so well last year and to be fair I want to keep it going. Especially if I start using the gym too, although I’m thinking music is better for repetitive exercises. I also think I should write a some short reviews for them as some are excellent.
This has been excellent with 17 audiobooks completed and started another 4. No idea why its registered the tyranny of metrics twice but you can see some great books in the list.
I am listening to most of the books while in the spa using waterproof headphones. I also started listening while on longer journeys like train rides to London, Bristol, etc.
Go to a new country
I missed this over the last few years and really like to get back into the flow of this. South Korea is certainly of interest along with a few of the European countries I have missed like Norway and the Czech republic.
Another year missed but I’m thinking about some of the European countries for a short retreat.
I started undoing the bad habits but its time for the endless suicide and some vertex genocides. Really need to find some groups again, as learn so much quicker when I can see it in front of me.
This hasn’t quite happened but I’m finding new groups including one which I went to after mybrushwithdeath.
I simply haven’t had the time but its something I keep thinking about. I noticed there being more interest in meeting up with people physically since the pandemic. However found peoples time is much more stricter and so it needs to be much tighter in its impact. I also noticed the idea of bi-monthly becoming a long stronger than previously.
Do more self-hosting
The selfhost train has really been moving over the last few years and I’m finding managing it a lot less stressful than it use to be. Yunohost has been a real joy and auto-update is great. Ideally a multiple domains would be really useful but cubicgarden.info is my playground.
This has happen although I am struggling with Docker containers on my QNAP nas and Yunohost is great but sometimes a bit strange.
If I can fully get my head around Docker containers using either container station or CasaOS, all will be good as I have struggled with Qnap’s cron. I did think about running Yunohost in a QNAP container but it seems overly complex for no reason.
Be more selective about the subscriptions
I am pretty good about this but I noticed there is quite a lot of legacy stuff which I should have removed a while back.
Well.. This was ahead of the complete move to the Fediverse, where I removed xtwitter from my life and cut down my podcast subscription too. One thing I noticed is I’m using the google feed quite a bit and consistently annoyed about it.So I installed FreshRSS to replace the ageing Tiny tinyRSS to finally get back into RSS again. The clients are much more fitting with the Android system. I also found much more up to date clients on Linux too.
Even better wellbeing
I’m not doing too bad but there is room of improvement, for example my sleep has taken a drop and I’m less active when not playing volleyball or summer. I need remind myself my spa also includes a gym which I should take advantage of more. Wellbeing also includes my digital wellbeing with not enough blogging and my gratitude diary has gone to pot. Next year I got to do something about this too.
This year has been ups and downs when it comes to wellbeing. Generally this is the year of many things including ultra processed food, multiple volleyball options, lots of early mornings, etc.
Generally its been ok but the dip in sleep has followed through into 2023. I did go the gym quite a bit but frankly it wasn’t for me. The spa is very relaxing and is a great place for audiobooks. Being active this year has been good especially during summer and now there is Volleyball options on Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat and in future Sundays. There is a headache with booking each one but at least there are options and its clearer now than ever.
I keep thinking about the gratitude diary and what I could do about it. My quick thought is just to write something personally, then keep wondering about Signals stories. However a small microblog seems better, as I do like to look at them over time. Maybe something for Fediverse ideas?
I saw this in my mastodon feed and just thought it was incredible and just so much how the Fediverse is and could be a shining light for the future of the social internet.
For Xmas, like many workplaces we have a staff party. I gatecrashed into my previous teams Manchester xmas party and put my name down for 30mins djing. However I didn’t record the mix but I did keep the playlist and so recreated it twice (2nd time for another work event).
I won’t lie, this is less trancy but is a killer mix or as others have said to me… its a banger!
I have been mixing away on the pacemaker device as usual. But noticed my mixgarden is having some troubles. I was using hyperaudio and webmonization to present my mixes. It was good however things changed over the last year.
So with all this in mind and after looking at Peertube and Castopod, I decided to give peertube a try before running my own instance. Similar to what I had planned with Funkwhale a long time ago.
Music Freediverse is a new place for musicians to post their songs as an RSS feed, using PeerTube.
After a email with the sysadmin, about mixes and legality of them. They suggested I check out Split Kit if I have the metadata (which I do), this is something I looked into and now have a lightening address, which you can send sats to on my new mixgarden. I am also interested in the peer 2 peer tech
One of the good things about Peertube is the ability to sync videos over, which I took advantage of, it was a shame the metadata wasn’t copied over too but its fine, as I had it all.
In the short term I’ll keep using peertube but I have a plan to install a peertube instance myself and host it all locally. Then I could syndicate them out elsewhere. (Anyone can recommend a good docker container, do shout)
Another thing for the task list, but likely the best idea for now with lots of room to grow and expand.
The whole area of online dating is a surveillance capitalism mess and I really wish someone in the EU commission would apply competition rules and regulations to this space.
I was talking with Evan recently in London and it spilled out to the Fediverse the next day. We talked about many things including a bit of passion for both of us, the absolute sorry state of online dating.
Its something I won’t even start on, but someone mentioned in a fediverse conversation a site called fediverse ideas.
Having a look, there were a ton of ideas to add from my head. However as they are proper Git issues, I decided its worth planning them out – likely over the holiday season.
Its a great thing to have for many reasons at such a early stage of the fediverse. Really speaks to the culture and innovation growing up around the fediverse and activitypub. My hope is this keeps going but I’m sure once the money comes into the space we will see less generosity, sadly…
For a long time I have had this quite unique way to download podcasts on my home network. It’s served me very well but since getting the NAS it’s been an endless fight to find a good way to do the same with minimal effort. Up till recently I have been running another machine on my network with Ubuntu, to download the podcasts using the tiny tiny rss source.
I would sync the podcasts over the network to my NAS mainly for connivance but I like the idea of the NAS being the place to access everything.
So after many years I finally come to a solution which might be useful to others too, as I couldn’t find a good solution in one place. To be fair I stopped running Tiny Tiny RSS (TTRSS) in favour of FreshRSS but regardless.
These are all for informational purposes and aimed at technical people who understand their way around a the terminal, have sudo and SSH access and can use alternative app repos.
I downloaded and unzipped Podget then ran it from the terminal. It worked once I found the user directory /share/homes/{username}
Then I started moving the download directory and where the config files sat by modifying the permissions.
Once it was working, I created a shell script which would pull the downloads and have all the parameters set. Remembering to make it executable checked it can work under a admin user
Then started on the Qnap cron, which is a pain and needs attention. This is also where CrontabUI can save you a lot of time. I did do it manually but found it tiresome and there was little feedback.
In CrontabUI, I tried a number of different options and would check they would run, looking at the timestamps of files. In the end what work ed for me was, /sbin/download-podcasts.sh. I tried many times to get it working but found it wouldn’t actually run outside of /sbin even with the right execute permissions.
Now it works but may reconsider switching to Castget now I stopped using TTRSS and I have found I need to use Podget 0.6 as it throws a lot of errors from missing libraries and out of date fgrep commands.
Hopefully this might be useful to others? There might be an update if I switch back to Castget.
A friend recently noticed North Tea Power was closed. I said really, you just noticed this? However, I remembered I had only posted this on Mastodon and I should be better about cross posting to my blog more. Especially since I have been using Mastodon a lot more recently.
