ROLEY

Month: January 2025

  • PODCAST: Roley Podcast for 1/31/2025

    A Love Letter to Gitmo

    Royal Rumble 2025. Yeah, I like wrestling. Sue me.

    Automating the whole podcast process?

    AI and my external hard drive full of photos

    Against my better judgment, I’ve opened comments on the site.

    Hero Syndrome: I still think that 2.0 will be similar to 1.0 when it comes to astonishing incompetence. Don’t be surprised if they tank everything trying to solve a problem they created. I just wish they could do that without getting people killed.

    Why even have confirmation hearings if they’re just going to perjure themselves with no consequence? End the hearing if you catch them in a lie. End the hearing if they dodge questions, or don’t answer. End the hearing the first time someone doesn’t answer a yes or no question with a yes or no. Just adjourn, clear the room, and let the nominee sit there. As always, this will not happen. Ever. Wouldn’t it be awesome, though?

    Do we point and laugh at the clown show?

    Samsung announced they are working on a non-invasive blood sugar monitor for a wearable.

    Jim Acosta, Journ-A Lister? I hope not.

    “I did that” stickers—Biden’s on gas pumps, Trump’s on eggs. How original. Please jump off a cliff into a pit of rusty razor blades.

    T.F.E. The F@@king Experts. There’s not a thing they don’t know, just ask them.

  • Thursday, Jan 30th, 2025

    • The fact that FOTUS wants to turn Guantanamo Bay into a ‘relocation camp’ for migrants has me steamed. I know I’ve said this before, but my family was stationed there from August 1980 to December 1982. It was one of the planet’s most unique and awesome places—no other place like it. Then Dubya decided to make it a prison, and that has left a stain on that place that will never wash out. This will ruin it. I’m unbelievably livid, but I’m mostly sad. This is what people will remember about Guantanamo Bay, and not the stories of the people that lived there. I bought the domain gitmomemories.com today, with the intent of finding those stories and posting them on a website there. I don’t know how this will go, but I’ll share more about it when I figure it out.
    • I said that I was hoping for the same level of incompetence out of 2.0, and it appears we got it. Unfortunately, that level of incompetence means the body count continues apace. I don’t want to be Mr. Drama and scream that they’re going to kill us all, but I can’t help but think that a good chunk of people aren’t going to make it out of 2.0 alive. I wish it weren’t so.

  • Wednesday, Jan 29th, 2025

    • I don’t know if this exists in the wild, but here’s a half-baked idea. Develop something that can examine a drive, and organize the pictures, I know that Photos on the Mac can do this to some extent, I’m talking about photos you have stored on, say, an external hard drive and NOT in Photos or the equivalent. Study the photos and organize them into subfolders, or tag them with something that can be searched for easily. I have a series of photos on a drive from my trip to Machias, Maine in October 2004. Herbert (or whatever) looks at the picture or it’s metadata and tags them #machias102004. Or create a folder called “Machias Oct 2004” and dump those photos in there. And for all the photos that have nothing to go on, call them misc, or orphan photos, or something, and tag or subfolder them as well. Yes, that would require manual work, but it would be way less than a folder of thousands of pictures to go through manually. Now, let me admit the obvious: I’m stupid, and I don’t get out much. This may exist and I don’t know it. I’ll go looking around, which is probably what I should have done before I started writing this half-baked, meaningless babble
    • I have a preset in Adobe Audition that foods (that’s a technical term) my voice files for the podcast, and then I export it to a folder for finished files. When I go to Captivate to publish, I drag and drop that file, add some notes, and hit publish. I’d love to automate the whole thing. Not sure that Automator would do all of it, but there’s a mad scientist thing to do…
    • I recently went through a re-watch of a British sci-fi show that’s a little less known than Doctor Who, but still worth your time. Blake’s 7. I have just two words for you: Kerr Avon. Well worth your time, and why this character isn’t widely known on the internet is beyond me.
    • There’s something darkly humorous about having a cardiology appointment rescheduled.
    • Today’s minor annoyance: “I did that” stickers—Biden’s on gas pumps, Trump’s on eggs. How original. Please jump off a cliff into a pit of rusty razor blades.

  • Tuesday, Jan 28th, 2025

    • With the understanding that Apple is seldom the first at something (something the Android Crew is eager to point out pretty much always), I am very happy to see that Samsung has opened its mouth about a non-invasive blood sugar test on a wearable. This is a big deal for folks with diabetes, and if it’s on an ‘affordable piece of tech’, I promise you a ton of us would buy it regardless of cost. More than anything else, that’s a quality of life enhancement. Up to this point, a CGM is the only way to keep from pricking your fingers multiple times a day, but a CGM still breaks the skin and can be costly.
    • Meta says All Your Toks Are Belong To Us, Plz Taek R Monee. But do go on about how TikTok is a national security threat and this had nothing to do with TikTok drinking every other platform’s milkshake. A reminder of the brilliance of Bill Hicks:
      • “Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here are 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”
    • Here is a link to the Posse Comitatus Act. The US Military being deployed to California would be leading every newscast and on the front page of every paper. It’s not.
    • Jim Acosta leaving CNN reminded me of what a real anchorman looks like signing off, and before you say newsmen don’t roll like that anymore, I’d tell you, “I know. That’s the problem.”

  • Monday, January 27th, 2025

    • I swear I am nowhere near Maine, this is not my fault.
    • Since eggs are the low-hanging fruit du jour, I suppose this is funny. I’d argue that you can make this about most ‘experts’ about anything on the internet. There’s a joke that goes along the lines of “So, all the folks that were experts about contagious disease are all First Amendment scholars now? Cool, cool.”
    • I can’t express to you how much this won’t happen, but there are certain situations where the only real response should be “You are not a serious person, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me when the adults show up, sit down, and shut the fuck up.” It should be repeated like a mantra—no one will.
    • I was just reminded of an episode of some crime procedural I’ve watched where someone was setting fires, and it turned out that it was a fireman, or ex-fireman, or a wanna-be fireman. They create the disaster, solve it, and get called a hero before everything is revealed. I think we’d do well to remember this storyline for a while. It may be useful. That said, I still think that 2.0 will be similar to 1.0 when it comes to astonishing incompetence. Don’t be surprised if they tank everything trying to solve a problem they created.
    • I realize that I am in a position to do this more easily than others, but laughing at the clusterfuck seems to be the best option for me. It reeks of privilege, I know. All I can tell you is that I’m laughing at them, and waiting for what I think is the inevitable conclusion of this shitshow. I don’t think he lasts the term. Bookmark this so you can laugh at me when I’m proven wrong, but something physical or mental is going to do what no one else has been able to do, and if that’s the only way this ends, I’ll take it. The only downside is what’s on the other side of that ending: A very sticky couch.

  • PODCAST: Roley Podcast for Jan 26th, 2025

    This is a continuation of last week’s rant about Walled Gardens like Facebook and open source. H/T to heathcliffnull for explaining like I’m five.

    Link:

    Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

  • PHOTO: Dumbsicle, Jan 20th, 2025

    Your intrepid idiot standing on the deck under the Lesner Bridge in Virginia Beach, taking pics with his iPhone on a tripod, in 18-degree weather.

  • VLOG: VLOG 01 — JAN 2025

    It’s been a minute. There are reasons.

  • Thursday, Jan 16th, 2025

    • I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall during the meeting that led to Biden and Co.’s attempt to reverse the TikTok ban. There are a lot of theories about why people wanted TikTok to go, but I’m pretty sure national security isn’t the real reason. The two I think are more likely is that A) The PTB doesn’t like the fact that TikTokers speak a lot of truth to bullshit, and have done very well at that. Look no further than the pandemic for examples of TikTok creators smacking that down on the quick. B) TikTok allows more people than ever to make a living from content creation instead of being in the office. RTO has been a priority for the status quo since the pandemic ‘ended’, and they’d like to take that option away. What wasn’t taken into account is how much the TikTok economy contributes to the overall economy, and they shit a brick when they crunched those numbers. So, no, barring SCOTUS upholding the ban, TikTok isn’t going away on Sunday. Once this is all over, I think we should focus on all social media, not just the ones ‘we don’t like’. It’s all been weaponized in one form or another, and while I’d really like to see it all thrown into the sun, we need to rethink social media. Period.
    • On a related note, I’ve signed up for a micro.blog account. I’m watching a playlist made by Numeric Citizen on how to use micro.blog. One thing I might find useful. I can subscribe to the RSS feeds for my accounts elsewhere, cross-post them to my micro blog, and then they will post to the other accounts I select. So, I could subscribe to my YT feed, which will post to my micro.blog, and then post to my Bluesky. The same could be done for this post on WP. It looks like you have to be on the $5/ month plan, but that’s MUCH less than the services like Buffer that charge at least 15 a month to do the same thing. I haven’t seen if there’s a way to schedule native posts (ones that are made in micro.blog as opposed to another feed), but if most of what’s getting posted is from another source, it may be a feature where the post originated. Of course, this may not matter to you at all. Not sure it matters to me, honestly. Food for thought.
    • Winter has come for the first time in five years or so around here. There’s a reason I tell people I’m FROM Maine. I was BORN there, that’s about it. Thanks to the US Navy, before the age of 13 I spent half of that in Hawaii and a good chunk of the other half in Gitmo. Winter was never on the dance card. The middle of next week the lows are going to be in the teens, and I am going to be miserable. They say we’ll have a pattern flip in February, and I am just counting the days. Hat Tip to Ryan Hall, who has become my go-to guy on the weather.

  • Tuesday, January 14th, 2025

    • Since I’ve become a big believer in not opening your mouth until you’ve tried to educate yourself, here’s Vol. 1 of the Jack Smith Report, posted with no further comment adjacent to it.
    • Pete Hegseth is a slimy, sweaty, creepy Herb Tarlek cosplayer. That said, there is no need whatsoever for the dramatics. Sen Gillibrand’s over the top rant is pathetically performative, and it cheapens the very legitimate questions she had.
    • I decided to pull the trigger on a new micro.blog. I’m going to play with it a little while before I make it public. Pretty sure you’ll figure it out though, it’s the same everywhere…

  • Monday, January 13th, 2025

    • Last time, I mentioned the new desk chair, and that it appeared unable to recline. It does, in fact, recline. It would have done so from the get if certain people who shall remain nameless would have installed the chair plate the right way instead of backwards. Let us never speak of this again.
    • Maddow is appearently going back to 5 nights a week until April. Of course this has everything to do with covering the new Administration and NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THEIR RATINGS GOING DOWN THE TOILET. NOTHING AT ALL.
    • Anyone taking bets as to whether we get Vol 1 of the Jack Smith Report today? Don’t be surprised if SCOTUS blocks it just before Midnight.
    • Apparently my once-a-decade dust up with VB Code Enforcement/Tragic Hollow HOA is due. I get an email every day from USPS, and I see two letters from the City. One addressed solely to me, and one addressed to both of us. That’s weird. I wonder if I’ve been cited for something separately? Now I get to spend all day waiting for the mail and wondering if it’s what I *think* it is, or if it’s some other bullshit.
    • I’m by no means a guru when it comes to WordPress, but is Matt Mullenweg ok? It’s giving “It’s MY ball, we play by MY rules” out at the kickball field. Actually, are all the Techbros morphing into the recess bullies they hated in school? Sure seems that way.

  • Friday, January 10th, 2025

    • If you accept that Trump was never going to jail under any circumstances, then let’s focus on what happened today. The verdict was upheld, a sentence was passed. I’m not sure if this is appealable to a higher court from here, I think he would have to show something happened to prevent him from getting a fair hearing? If it’s not appealable, then the bottom line is that Donald Trump is now and forever a convicted felon. Make all the jokes you want about ‘getting away with it’, he didn’t. In a (very) small way, there has been accountability. Trust me, he’s livid about this.
    • If you want to know why you’re in a cult, part eleventy: MAGA has jumped to naming all the people who also have convictions, like MLK, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela… You could hear the sound of millions of goalposts moving. Like I said the other day. “STOP PERSECUTING ME!” said the guy in charge.
    • I listened to the Supreme Court arguments for TikTok today. IANAL, but it appears to me that the government is dressing up a free-speech argument as a national security threat. What the government is accusing TikTok of doing is using an algorithm to show you content. It thinks China can manipulate that algorithm to show you what it wants you to see. The trouble with this argument is that an algorithm is an editorial slant. That’s ANY For You/Discover/We Think You’ll Like/Related Page at ANY content company. Facebook does the same thing, lest you forget. There are two questions to answer: Does a threat to national security trump the 1st Amendment? Second, if TikTok poses a national security threat, then show us the threat. I can think of a greater threat to national security than this, and it’s not hypothetical. It’s real, and it’s taking office in 10 days. That opinion has been and will be all over TikTok, and I think that’s the real reason the gov’t wants it gone. Speaking truth to bullshit? Well, we can’t have that, can we?
    • I put together my new desk chair last night, and I realized upon sitting in it that it does not recline. It’s one of these ergonomic chairs that adjust in a few ways, but reclining is not one of them. It’s probably very good for my back if I can keep from slouching forward. This is just one of the ways I don’t human very well I suppose, but we’ll see if this chair helps my posture. I’m practically a hunchback on my best days.
    • With any luck, a super-duper pod this weekend. Stay Tuned.

  • Thursday, January 9th, 2025

    • A small correction to my half-baked meaningless babble about the jack Smith report yesterday: It has been pointed out to me that even if the concerige judge Cannon gets overturned, it will be appealed to SCOTUS, where Concierge Justice Thomas will accommodate them. So, if you’re asking the overall question “Did the insurrection work?’ the answer is yes. Yes, it did.
    • The more I think about it, the more I believe that while we should be afraid of what happens when these people in power have no guardrails, it might be the best thing to happen to our society in the long term. This came to me when I saw a post by Nancy Mace, AI’d to look like a knight in armor in front of a ladies’ room door. She also felt free enough to call people on the left dumbasses, which is usually something left for the rabble to do. Watch this space.
    • Re: Meta. I’m torn about what to do with my Meta accounts. Some people in my life I can only contact through Meta, so I need to keep the account. I rarely use it for posting anymore, so he’s not getting money or clicks from me. I think I can remove the Instagram/Threads accounts on principle. I was concerned about where to post photos to share, Glass (paid) or Pixelfed (Fediverse), but I’m forgetting First Principles here. I have a place to share my photos: MY place.
    • A little PSA from my day job: Here’s a hypothetical: If you call the bank on behalf of your elderly parents or in-laws, and we can’t get permission from them, we can’t talk to you. Also, you can’t DO anything. In most cases like that, the bank would need a Power of Attorney. So, don’t turn around after the bank tells you that and try to make a withdrawal online on, say, a day when you think no one is paying attention. We’re paying attention, and you just got the account frozen. No withdrawal for you. We need the POA. Period. Thanks for playing.

  • Wednesday, January 8th, 2025

    • Remember this as you read stories about buying Greenland, taking control of the Panama Canal, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”, that Woody Allen had this nailed years ago. I stand by my prior statement that he returns to the scene of the outrage and makes it part of his shtick. That doesn’t make him less insane. The man operates solely from self-interest and is unable to see anyone or anything outside of that context. Again, a narcissist isn’t affected by anger or opposition. What they cannot stand is silence, and/or the possibility of being humiliated in public.
    • This business with Jack Smith’s report would be an excellent example of his aversion to being publicly humiliated. He’s trying to stop the report from being released or stall it until after the inauguration. Then his AG pick can spike it if she’s confirmed. At the very least, Bondi will do what Bill Barr did with the Mueller Report. (EDIT: The concierge judge Aileen Cannon has acted as expected and blocked the release of the report, deferring it to the 11th Circuit, and ordered that the block remains in effect until three days after the circuit court makes their decision or is otherwise resolved. This ruling is a clear sign that Cannon knows it’s likely to be overturned on appeal, but the three-day buffer ensures no release before the inauguration. Make no mistake: The person practicing ‘lawfare’ has always been Trump. Every accusation is a confession, as the saying goes. )
    • All of this to say: There is no magic bullet. There is no damning report, there is no allegation of criminal behavior that will get Trump another impeachment for the next two years at least. No one is coming to save us, as they say. Stop listening to people who want you to believe otherwise.
    • I don’t give a fuck what Mark Z. says. When you get to the chewy center of it, he did not create Facebook for some lofty moral purpose. He was dragged into doing ‘the right thing’ every single fucking time Facebook has been called on the carpet. He’s slime, he’s always been slime.

  • Tuesday, Jan 7th, 2025

    • I need to see this out in the discourse if it isn’t already: “STOP PERSECUTING US!!! (said the people in charge)”.
    • Would someone please tell Nancy Mace that the extra is getting tiresome? Four years ago, your fellow cult members were wiping shit on the walls and crushing cops in doorways. You braved the snow. We are not the same, you wilted cabbage. Have a Coke, a smile, and a fucking seat.
    • If you’re not dialed in on the various blog content management systems that exist, this may not mean anything to you, but there’s been a little bit of drama surrounding WordPress lately, enough of it to the point that I started looking around at alternatives. I ruled out Squarespace immediately because I’ve already seen that movie and I don’t need all the bells and whistles. I’m not thinking about making this a monetary success anymore, I just want to have fun. I’d like to draw your attention to two other systems I looked at recently:
      • micro.blog — This platform is for regular content creators but allows it to be your social hub. You can subscribe to your RSS feeds and then share the content you post everywhere to, well, everywhere else. That’s fine if you want to use your social networks to promote your content. I don’t, at least not for right now. Also, almost all the people on micro.blog that I read had a primary blog elsewhere. That seems redundant to me.
      • Ghost — This platform allows professionals to share their content like a newsletter, allowing monetization. It’s Medium without the posts about how to make money on Medium.

        WordPress, for all its drama, is likely the best option for most people if you’re just…y’know…blogging.

  • Monday, January 6th, 2025

    • Everyone knows what day it is and is well aware of what happened on this day. There was a point when we all agreed that it was horrible, but that was short-lived. Today, we saw how it’s supposed to be done, lest we forget.
    • If you believe we’re merging with Canada and buying Greenland, I can’t help you. He got a rise out of us. It’s covefe. It’s “the calm before the storm.’ It’s the Sharpie. I keep saying that his fear is not being shamed, he has no shame. His fear is the day he bleats out some insane rant, and hears nothing in response. No reaction. No anger. Nothing. Trust me, it drives people like him nuts. I know this from experience.
    • I started the studio redesign this weekend. I have a new L-shaped desk for my Mac and my WFH stuff. I still have much to do, but I must confess that I overlooked something: This desk does not have a lip or space for my mic desk clamp. Looking for solutions. That’s why there was no podcast this weekend. I’ll resolve it as soon as possible.

  • Friday, January 3rd, 2025

    • I wonder what Mike Johnson had to give those two congressmen to keep his job. The old curse is that we live in interesting times. It’s going to be an interesting two years.
    • I try not to spend every waking moment in my office. So, I take my iPad Pro into the living room. I try to be social while I do what passes for research and writing. The fine folks at WordPress have an app for that called Jetpack. For the most part, I like it. The only problem is that I can’t copy the format of an earlier post. It considers every line in a post to be a separate block. I wondered if it works in the iPadOS Safari Browser, it does not. Finally, I went to my iMac, and it works there. If I copy the template from the iMac into my Notes app and copy it from there it works. I wonder why there’s a difference.
    • One of the things I’m looking forward to is playing with some new toys from ShiftCam. I have a new SnapGrip, the Stand Max, and a Snap Pocket light. These attach magnetically to my iPhone for photography and videography. Over the next year, I intend to use my iPhone exclusively, because it’s less bulky and easier to pack. I hope it means the device is easier to use. If the process has more friction, I won’t use it. It doesn’t seem difficult, so it’s up to the space between my ears.

  • Thursday, January 2nd, 2025

    • Watching the events of yesterday, I’m reminded that often the fastest and loudest takes right after some act of violence has taken place is usually made by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, or by people who are paid to be the fastest and loudest and STILL don’t know what they’re talking about. This includes a small but merry band of alleged ‘journalists’ that are more interested in engagement than accuracy.
    • We can boil all social media down to one sentence we’ve all learned: I don’t know who needs to hear this, but… No one needs to hear anything on social media. What we’re doing is attention-seeking. That’s the addiction. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but see it for what it is. Even blogging is a cry for that same attention, but there’s no bigger test of quality. The leap of faith you take with a blog is writing things people want to read. Or, you choose not to care and write it anyway. I’ve chosen the latter. It’s not that I don’t care what you think, it’s more like I don’t care to filter my opinion and I feel it’s more appropriate to do that here.

  • The Verbs, January 2025

    Watching: 1923, from the Yellowstone series (Paramount +)

    Reading: The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

    Jamming: Live 1978-1992 by Dire Straits

    Podding: The Black Dahlia Serial Killers by Wondery

    Working: Right here on this site. I’m just working on creating content for now.

  • Wednesday, January 1st, 2025

    • As much as I’d like to write some flowery New Year’s related prose here, I will resist the urge. I never live up to it anyway.
    • From a numerology standpoint–if you’re inclined to believe that stuff–this would be a ‘4’ year for me, where I lay a foundation for whatever is to come. I’ve been through one of these years about a decade ago. I did not get the message, or this stuff is just cyclical. It’s probably as much a bunch of hokum as astrology. To be fair though, the day I was rear-ended by a drunk driver in 1988, my horoscope said that ‘evening would find you in a bit of a scrape’. So, I’ll stay open to the Universe, thanks.
    • I don’t want to spend the next year–or four–obsessing over the dementia patient and the techpolitburo. If anything, this is where being a card-carrying member of Generation X may come in handy. Maintain an overdeveloped sense of cynicism, sarcasm, and dark humor, and get on with it. Wolverines, Bueller, and Amen.