10 PRINT "CLIVE WAS HERE"
August 23, 2024
Hello!
Hurtling towards the final week of "No Cast AuGast", it's all music, all the time. Plus a bit of Python, and YouTube.
-[ Contrafibularities ]-
Pettyness unlocked
In "A resource for your newsletter?" last week, I lamented getting unsolicited requests to share links or articles.
Jon wrote to confirm this is a widespread thing and what it really is: a request to host spam. He pointed me in the direction of his blog, based on a similar sour-but-appropriate response by Troy Hunt from 2020 titled No, I Won't Link to Your Spammy Article.
Good work, chaps. I approve. I will not be adding these phrases to the newsletter (you'll be glad to hear, no doubt) but I might create a similar blog post, should the link-swapping spammers return.
back-pat
Ken wrote to say: "I can't explain it, but I get joy out of reading your newsletter!".
Thanks, Ken! Not sure I can explain it either. But I appreciate the sentiment.
-[ Consume ]-
It's another train video, isn't it?
Yes.
The railway enthusiasts' railway enthusiast; Geoff Marshall asks Why Do We Still Have Semaphore Signals?. Now I know, and so can you. I'm not saying it's about Great Railway Journeys of the Zombie Apocalypse, but I'm also not saying it isn't that, either.
I subscribed to Nicola White - Mudlark some years back, probably after watching a TikTok. But I never got around to watching any of her long-form videos.
I fixed that today when the soulless YouTube engage-o-tron experienced a rare spark of humanity and recommended a video with the longest title ever: This Is What I Dream About At Night! I Was So Excited When I Saw This Treasure Poking Out Of The Mud. It's the epitome of "One man's trash", and Nicola certainly does stumble on a lot of trash treasure. I also subscribed to her friend Mud Bagger.
Broken maps
Via Dale Lane, Every map of China is wrong - And this is intentional..., by Anastasia Bizyayeva, is a fascinating look into global mapping standards, international politics, protectionism and algorithms. Map nerds will like this.
Morning has broken
My morning commutes have been filled with excellent tunes with no cringe or filler but including something from this century. How novel. This week:
Passion - Naked Edit (1996) - Gat Decor - Pure nostalgic happiness, dancing the night away in the Fiesta del Agua (water party) at Es Paradis. In 1996, I blew the cones out of some lovely TDL RTL-2 floor-standing speakers with far too much of this song. I wonder if it was the cheap, poor-quality amplifier from Tandy (US: Radioshack). Ya think?
The Sound Of Eden (1990) - Shades of Rhythm - Another club track from the distant past. I would hear this in a club, then ask the DJ what it was, and immediately forget the name until the next weekend. I ended up buying it on vinyl, which is probably kicking around somewhere.
Blinding Lights (2019) - The Weeknd - I could have this single song on repeat... For now... Until it gets consigned to the Overplayed section of Room 101. Not yet though, still liking it.
-[ Create ]-
Bot Building
This week, I made a bot. It's called Uncle Clive, after the late Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the Sinclair Spectrum.
You send the bot a toot containing Sinclair Spectrum BASIC code - 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD";: GOTO 10 - that kind of thing, and it (theoretically) replies (a few minutes later) with a minute-long video of a (virtual) Spectrum running your code. For example, this person did, and here's Uncle Clive's reply in video form.
There were some challenges and delays during development. Indeed, if you look closely, you'll note I registered the Mastodon account back in Feb 2023!
The BBC Micro Bot by Dominic Pajak was the initial inspiration to create my own bot. The recent revival in my bot development playtime came from a recent thread about bots with Terence Eden. Thanks to both.
At some point, I'll probably write a lengthy blog post and speak about Uncle Clive in more detail on Linux Matters. The short version is that I wrote a Python script with Mastodon.py to access the Mastodon API. It uses zmakebas, a lightly patched Fuse, and ffmpeg to generate the video responses.
It was a fun project that helped me understand the Mastodon API better. I feel good about the rather "MVP" shape it's in. While I want to improve it, I'd also like to use it as a blueprint for other interactive things on Mastodon.
Into The Night
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned some music videos I used to "QA" the Media Player app on Ubuntu Touch devices.
While preparing that section, I quietly lamented my terrible memory failing to recall the other songs I used test with. Then, this week, the YouTube electronic mystery meat threw me a bone, and recommended Blaenavon - Into The Night . This was one of my favourite QA tracks back in 2013.
"Bit Weird" Sidebar
On 28th March 2013, while watching the aforementioned music video; "Into The Night", I thought I recognised one or two of the filming locations. I asked the clockwork Internet of the past if anyone could help identify a road name or other details. The hive-minds worked together and found the house and road used in the video.
Which Internet hive mind in the past did this sleuthing? The #ubuntu-uk IRC channel, which is helpfully logged, among 20 years of other marginally less weird conversations.
New popey playlists
I didn't want to forget that song again, which applies to all the tracks I mention in the newsletter. I decided the best thing to do is save them to a playlist. So I created three, one on Spotify, YouTube and Discogs. I can't add every song on both platforms for reasons. I'll try and keep these up to date, but no promises!
I don't know of any open platforms I could maintain a similar list on. Let me know if you do.
Old popey playlists
While setting up that YouTube playlist, I re-discovered one I'd made a decade ago called Ubuntu Touch Test Videos. I likely used it as a way to collate a list of videos I could youtube-dl directly to a new phone.
Wonderful news, for me, being reminded of those videos I'd "lost" in the rivulets of my mind. However, now I look more carefully at the list, I appear to have added some weird content to it.
You have the link to the list, but here's direct links to a few of the videos that have made me chuckle quite a bit over the years.
I'll arrange them in the now-traditional popey's "Cringe Sandwich" format.
You will be pleased to know these will not be featured on the New newsletter playlists for internally consistent reasons I do not need to elaborate on.
Thanks for reading. Toodle-pip!
-- popey
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© Copyright 2024 Alan Pope. All rights reserved
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