Bill Bennett
Mid Century Modernity
In my view what @ayjay calls “mid-century modernity” has a lot to do with the arrival of practical international real-time communications and international travel. That meant we got to see much more of other, seeminly exotic cultures and, in my view, that process saw us taking a fresh look at ourselves and in some cases, a look at ourselves from the outside.
Thinking about the English Premier League relegation tussle. Everton and Leeds play more attractive football than Burnley… at least they did until the last couple of games. So I’d prefer Burnley to drop. ⚽️
Is there a pratical alternative to Mail Chimp…. perhaps something a little more in tune with indieweb thinking?
The Download Weekly - latest edition of my newsletter covering New Zealand telecommunications
It took an hour and 15 minutes for the Two Factor Authenication code to arrive from Mail Chimp to my phone. By the time it got here it had expired.
In effect I’m locked out.
I’ve yet to figure out how and why stories I post on my WordPress site are linked to in my Micro.blog and appear twice…
My weekly New Zealand telecommunications newsletter resumes after an Easter (and Covid) break.
Download Weekly - UFB leg secures West Coast network resilience
Making a case for renaming The Peter Principle as The Dick Principle.
Moving mail from G-Suite to iCloud
At the start of the year Google gave notice that the grandfathered G-suite accounts that let people use their domain name in Gmail addressess was about to stop.
I moved my own-domain-name email account to iCloud, my familiy storage subscription means it is a pro-account and can be used with the domain name at no extra cost.
The move went relatively smoothly, there was a heart-in-the-mouth moment at the switch over where nothing happened for an hour or two but then it worked perfectly well.
On the whole it is good. What is curious, but should not be a surprise, is that a different type of spam gets through iCloud’s filters. The spam that made it through Google’s filters has gone, but now I get at least two spams a day telling me my never-existed McAfee software subscription has lapsed and my computer is vulnerable.
iCloud filters a lot of junk mail, but I’ve found it’s more agressive with incoming sales email. Most of the time I’m good with that, but it did mean I missed my insurance premium when the letter and the reminder both ended up in my junk folder.
In memoriam Twitter
So. Farewell Then Twitter.
Social networking and micro-blogging service.
Whatever that’s supposed to mean in English
Keith’s mum used to Tweet things.
Like “I had cornflakes for breakfast”
And other pearls of wisdom
EJ Thribb age 17 1/2
(with acknowledgement to Barry Fantoni and Private Eye magazine. I was inspired to write this after reading news headlines saying ‘Twitter is dead’).
The fact that more than 5 million WordPress users have installed a plug-in to workaround the woeful Gutenberg editor tells you it remains a problem.
I stumbled over this story scraped from my site years ago
This is a story of mine that was syndicated on Scoop. Scraped by someone who then changed a few words to make the text look illiterate, but probably to avoid accusations of scraping then added a 15 year old photo of me.
Updated post about Wi-Fi 6 on my website:
“Upgrading your home network to Wi-Fi 6 will give you the full benefit of a fast broadband connection.”
On reflection, “an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters” sums up the modern internet rather well.
I would prefer it if my iMac warned me the mouse battery was flat before it got as low as 2%. That’s “drop what you are doing and recharge” territory, I’d prefer to know at the “when you next take a break” stage.
Project Auckland: All you need is . . . love
Here’s a feature I wrote for the NZ Herald about a new approach to urban planning. Michala Lander wants to create places we love.
Exciting. My copy of the ITP book has arrived. I wrote the chapter on New Zealand telecommunications.
I’m on my third or fourth day of having a really mild dose of Covid. Clearly the vaccine has helped smooth out the rough edges. Main symptoms are headaches and general, non-specific discomfort. Find work a struggle, brain fog fades in and out.
This is interesting. I found as a journalist I need to be more thorough in my preparation and write more notes prior to a Zoom call, I find in-the-room interviews tend to produce better results.
Workers think less creatively in Zoom meetings, study finds - Psychology - The Guardian
One thing I will miss if Twitter crashes and burns is all the helpful expert advice and knowledge you can read there on every subject under the sun. The sheer volume of experts is astounding.
Wrote this for the Network for Learning blog.
I think I’ve done this before, but can anyone remind me how to get this working?
From indiewebify.me:
micro.blog/billbenne… does not link back
In the Beginning was the Website
“Even if the entire IndieWeb consisted of a single personal website, it would still “work”, in the sense that the owner of the website would be in control of their own content and would still be able to share that content with their friends on (say) Twitter.”
Syndication Links now supports per-post syndication to Micro.blog from WordPress
indiwebify.me reports that “micro.blog/billbenne… does not link back”. Is that normal? If not, what do I need to do to fix it?