Category: World Wide Web Wednesday

Today’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

https://www.railstotrails.org/ – The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

This past spring, I took up bicycling after a twenty-plus year hiatus. It feels like having an old friend in my life. I

n my teenage years, I rode my Huffy ten-speed for miles to go to work or summer sports conditioning or just to get out of the house. In college, I rode my bike for miles just to get away from life in the apartment. I likely would have continued into adulthood, but a few things got in the way. First, a bad bike wreck caused by the fact my bike was improperly fitted and poorly-tuned made me a little fun shy. Second, I got a job and free time seemed to evaporate. Third, I moved somewhere bike riding just wasn’t possible. The final blow was having kids.

Desperately needing to stop the downward spiral of my physical body and finding that life circumstances had improved, I decided to renew my acquaintance with biking. I visited a local bike shop who set me up properly and sent me on my way. I wasn’t alone in my desires. Ms. Boss also bought herself a bike and soon displayed even more passion for the pastime than I did. We were both racking up the miles, but where to ride? That’s where the Rails to Trails Conservancy comes in.

Rails to Trails Conservancy’s mission ‘is to create a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines, connecting corridors to build healthier places for healthier people.’ I’m certainly looking to be healthy, which aligns with their mission. Ms. Boss and I have ridden on several of the lines listed on the website and thoroughly enjoyed them (as an aside, it doesn’t hurt that railroads are relatively flat which is good for an old man like me). There is, however, something else at work here as well.

My father loved trains. He grew up in a railroad town and his fascination never stopped – model railroading, taking pictures of the real thing, even tracing the routes of abandoned railroads – my life growing up was filled with trains. While I have not had as fervent of a love as he did, something involving trains does touch a soft spot in my heart. I think about him every time I ride one.

Rail to Trails – something that’s not only good for my heart, but dear to my heart.

After a significant hiatus, World Wide Web Wednesday returns with..

https://www.richroll.com/ – The Rich Roll Website

In just a few months, life will force me to change the tagline of this website to ‘searching for meaning and surviving his fifties’. As a result, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on changes I’ve made in my life and searching for ways to transition gracefully into my sixth decade on this earth. The student is ready and Rich Roll is the teacher that has appeared.

My first introduction to Rich Roll was the cookbook he wrote with his wife – The Plantpower Way. Ms. Boss bought this book to help us adapt a more plant-based diet. While I still have one foot in the omnivore universe, this book has undoubtedly changed the way we eat and has provided us with several good meals. That, however, is not why it was chosen for this weeks link.

To tell the truth, I’m not really much of a podcast aficionado – numerous forays into consuming the genre never seemed to set the hook – but Ms. Boss introduced me to Rich Roll’s podcast and I’ve been a voracious consumer ever since. How voracious? It has replaced NPR as my jam during the almost two hours I commute every day and punk rock when I’m doing chores around the house.

To use Rich’s words the podcast is ‘a weekly aural dance designed to provoke, educate, inspire and empower you to discover, uncover, unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self.’ It does what it sets out to do. The conversations are long-form and cover a wide array of topics. While I can’t always relate to the experience of the people being interviewed, I can relate to some of their struggles. Rare is the episode where I’m not entertained, rarer still is the episode where I’m not edified. I can’t say that about any other podcast I’ve ever listened to

The needle of my life is moving slowly, but I firmly believe it’s headed in the right direction towards a longer and more meaningful life. Thank you to Ms. Boss and Rich Roll for grabbing my attention and making that happen.

World Wide Web Wednesday returns with:

www.trello.com

For the longest time, I’ve looked for a ‘to do list’ app to keep my sh… err… life straight. Trello is the one that has held on the longest. (Thanks for the tip, Ms. Boss!). Read on to discover why.

It’s Free(ish) – Yes, there are a lot of cool things that you can add on if you pay for them, but so far I haven’t needed more than a few free ones. Besides, in my personal life I’m a bit of a cheapskate. In my occupational life? Don’t even get me started on the complexities of the procurement process at work.

It’s a Website and an App: My go-to for Trello at home is the app on my iPad. On my work PC, it’s in my Web browser. Yes, there are subtle differences between the environments, but not enough to worry about.

It Has Alexa Integration: I’m not a hardcore user of Alexa, but there are times when it comes in handy. Example, when you’re making dinner and you use the last of a household staple and don’t want to come to a screeching halt to write it down on a shopping list, a shout out to Alexa and an IFTTT integration will put it right on your Trello board. Yes, I know Alexa has shopping list embedded and Jeff Bezos will happily send it to you for a small amount of coin, but…

You Can Sort Your List By Dragging Card Around – This is perhaps my favorite part of the app. Want to sort your list in the order of the grocery store because you can because you know where everything is because you go so often because four daughters in your house do nothing but consume? A couple of clicks and you’re good to go. Does the boss come at you with a yet another ‘drop everything and do this’? Slap that assignment on a card and drag it right to the top of the pile. Put a couple of color labels on your cards or put some due dates on and it makes it even better.

Trello has quite a few other features that I don’t make as much use of – checklists, comments, archiving, multiple boards – that I don’t make as much use of, but may be just what you are looking for. If you’re in the neighborhood, it may just be worth a look.

That’s another link to the rest of the Internet in the books… err… blog. Now go out there and Web!

This week’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

www.audacityteam.org – Audacity

I return back to the world of technology this week and bring you yet another piece of open-source software I use on a regular basis.  I deal with audio files quite a bit in my job.  While Windows Media Player is adequate for listening to them, I’m often called upon to edit files or create them. When this is the case, Audacity gets the nod.

The software is pretty intuitive and the effects package is more than adequate for my needs. It also allows you to export to various common audio formats and sample rates.  It includes a spectrum analyzer that, while pretty basic, I’ve found to be particularly helpful in my work.   At home, it’s my ‘go to’ for creating custom ring tones, which I do because when my phone goes off, I want to know it’s my phone.

Installation is easy, but I’ve had to add some packages to get it to work on my Linux machine at home, but nothing too extreme. I did manage to get malware once when I downloaded it from a site I wasn’t familiar with, but if you practice ‘safe computing’, you should be fine.

Audacity – give it a whirl. Now go out and web.

After a few weeks off, it’s time for another installment of World Wide Web Wednesday.  Today’s link is…

http://thesunmagazine.org/ – The Sun Magazine

For once, this is not a technology link.  In fact, this magazine is one instance in my life where I go ‘full analog’ getting the magazine by the good old U.S. Mail.

Like many great ideas that have floated through my life in the last fifteen years, my relationship with The Sun came about when Ms. Boss ran across the magazine and signed me up for a free trial.  I enjoyed the writing that highlights, as the magazine says, people rising to meet life’s challenges and soon enough had a subscription.  I’ve been an ‘on and off’ subscriber ever since reading every issue cover to cover.

My favorite segment every month is ‘Readers Write’ – a section where readers write about the topic that has been chosen for month.  The short snippets cover some of the pivotal moments in the lives of others. For the record, I’ve been tempted to write, but have never pulled the trigger.

Fair warning – if you’re allergic to left-leaning politics and ideas, this magazine isn’t for you so you might want to retreat to the safety of Fox News.  While I don’t necessarily endorse the economic values represented within, it does appeal to my more like libertarian nature. Some of the writers seem to have liberated themselves from some of the more unseemly sides of modern society, something that makes me the tiniest bit jealous.

The Sun Magazine – go visit and, better yet, subscribe to support this non-profit venture. Now go forth and web!

This week’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

http://lubuntu.net/ – Lubuntu

(I know, another nerd post.  It’s who I am and where I visit.  Maybe something different next week…)

I’m a bit of a cheapskate.  There’s quite a few reasons for it – four daughters is probably reason enough – but I am, both at work and home.  Witness the very computer that I’m writing this blog entry on.  It’s a netbook that was never very quick, even when it was new over six years ago.  I was relatively poor at the time and couldn’t afford much more than, but I irreparably damaged the computer I was using at the time (also relatively cheap) and needed a replacement.

Fast forward a couple of years and the netbook started s l o w i n g…  d  o  w  n…, so much so that Bill Gate’s latest offering was taking over five minutes to boot up – not exactly the proper tool to look up something quickly on the interwebs.  Being somewhat less poor at the time, I could have gone out and bought something else, but that just didn’t seem to jive with my frugal nature.  I knew that something could be done, I mean seriously, even a 1 GHz processor is a far cry better than what I first started surfing the web with and my netbook wasn’t always this slow.  I began to think maybe the operating system was the issue more than the computer.

My first foray into a Windows alternative was Ubuntu.  It was slightly better than what I was still a little sluggish.  The main beef with Ubuntu users at the time was all the ‘extras’ that the creators of Ubuntu were lopping into the software.  After all, open source creators need to pay the bills somehow.

I went back to Windows, but I still wasn’t enamored with the performance.  I actually stopped using my computer for awhile – an iPhone basically filled the need – until changes at work basically required I have a working computer at home.

That’s when I discovered Lubuntu.

Lubuntu, for all intents and purposes, is a stripped down version of Ubuntu with the centerpiece being a lightweight GUI application.  Lubuntu does live up to it’s billing – my netbook is faster now than it ever was running a product out of Redmond.

What do I think of it?  I like it.  As an open-source Linux software, it isn’t quite as easy to use out of the box like Microsoft, but if you want to spend more time than money, surfing the interwebs will provide you the knowledge you need eventually.  The unanticipated benefit is a better knowledge of how Linux works which has come in real handy.   Some work in the terminal is necessary for advance configuration, but I was on the internet before I knew there was such a thing as the World Wide Web, so messing around with the command line is no biggie for me.  If Lubuntu ever does outgrow my netbook, I can always give Arch a try…

Do I have plans to replace my netbook?  Nope. It bogs down on graphic intensive sites, but otherwise fits my needs. It will even run the very few Window-only programs I need for work.  Google is trying to force my hand by dropping support for Chrome, but I was looking for a web browser when I found them so I’m sure something will come around to fill that need.

Lubuntu – if you have an old computer, breathe some new life into it by giving it a whirl.  Now go out there and web…

(yes, I know it’s Thursday, work with me here)

Today’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

http://dashing.io/ – Dashing

I love data in any kind of form.  You name it, I like it – numbers, gauges, meters, even plain ‘ol blinky lights. I will sit there and watch just about anything that provides information.  To tell you how extreme I am about it, the electric company once installed a device to shut off my air conditioner during peak periods. I used to be able to seeit from my bed blinking on and off and on and off.  When they came and removed it, I was highly, highly pissed they took my blinky light away.

Yes, I love taking in information. The only thing better than getting information is getting information from a device of your own making… or one that has been extensively manipulated by you.

Dashing is an open-source program written in Ruby that serves up web pages that can be dynamically update with a Java derivative. As the administrator of a couple of systems and the backup administrator of a couple more, I find it entertaining  informative to see what those systems are doing in near real time. The installation is pretty easy provided all the proper packages are in place but the configuration can be a bit of a bear – my typical experience with most open-source software.  While you don’t need to know much Ruby or Java to run things, a working knowledge of html is quite helpful if you want to make changes to the layout like I did.  While you can configure the software to pull data, I preferred to push data via JSON by modifying some Python scripts I already had in place to send data elsewhere. While the main display is on a large screen television, I always keep a browser open to the main web page on my desk because, well, I can.

I’ve threatened to install a Dashing server at home to keep track of certain things like the calendar and weather, but it just never seems to get done.  Have I mentioned that I have too many hobbies?

Dashing – it’s awesome.  Now get out there and Web.

Today’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

https://www.virtualbox.org/ – Oracle VM VirtualBox

You’ll have to forgive me on this one.  This isn’t as much a cool site you can visit as it is a tool that you can use, but it’s the site that I came up with.

VirtualBox is a program that runs virtual machines.  A virtual machine (VM) is an emulation of a particular computer system (thank you, Wikipedia) or – to try and really dumb it down – a ‘computer’ that runs on another computer.

What do you use it for?  Well, here’s an example.  The family computer at home is an Apple.  One of the applications that I need to access equipment at work runs exclusively on Windows.  So, when you want to be able to access your stuff at work without having to go to the car and get the work laptop, what do you do?  That’s right – you run your software on a Windows emulator on your Linux virtual machine residing on your Apple computer.  Why? I don’t have a Microsoft license or a spare computer lying around. Complicated?  Kind of.  Works?  You betcha.

I also use VirtualBox at work.  I display data using a program called ‘Dashing’ that runs exclusively on Linux, yet it needs to pull data from a program that runs exclusively on Windows.  By running a Linux virtual box on a Windows machine, I’m able to handle all this one one machine.  Another neat thing about this application is that it runs on a closed network.  To update the software, I clone the entire computer, move it to a computer that is exposed to the internet, do my updates, and write it back onto the closed network. This also can serve as a backup that you can start almost immediately.

What’s the best thing about VirtualBox?  It’s open-source and absolutely free.   When you the procurement process is as difficult as the one I have to deal with at work, you find ways to work around it.  As with most free software, you are still going to ‘pay something’ when you use it – just ask anyone who has gotten malware on their computer downloading something.  In the case of VirtualBox, what you pay is your time to figure it out which, thanks to copious amounts of documentation, isn’t much.

Ever wanted to give a Linux distribution a whirl? (For the record, I’m writing this blog from a Linux machine)  Give VirtualBox a try.

Today’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

www.google.com

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past twenty years , you’ve probably heard of Google.  Saying it’s one of my ‘go-to’ websites isn’t revealing some great secret, it’s saying I’m just like millions of other people in the world. But have you ever took a moment to think about Google?  Let’s take a moment to do just that with a few points…

1)  Google is only seventeen years old. That’s right the website that you trust to guide and direct you to the information you need isn’t old enough to vote yet.  In that short time, it is completely ingrained itself in our society.  Only twelve-year-old Facebook comes close to this.

2) Google wasn’t first.  In the early days of the internet, Yahoo was my ‘go-to’ until I discovered Altavista followed  by Dogpile (still around, but a shell of its former self in case your curious. I remember being introduced to Google by my boss.  I held on to Dogpile for a little bit before switching.  Why did I switch.  Google was simpler… and better.

3)  To most consumers, Google offer its services for free. That’s right, most people use Google to search the Web and don’t pay a dime for it.  Another one of their ubiquitous products, Gmail, is also free.  That’s a price I’m willing to pay.

4) Google is worth almost half a trillion dollars.  That’s a lot of zeroes, folks.  Now many companies can make something out of nothing (WorldCom and Enron), but many times it collapses right back to nothing (WorldCom and Enron).  Google is in no danger of going that way.  Why?  Because…

5)  You are the product.  That’s right, dear reader.  Your surfing for cat videos is a marketable commodity.  Every click you make, every page you take, Google’s watching you. Watching you and selling your data to people who want to know about you.  Take a glance around the next page you visit that had ads, soon enough you’ll get that eerie feeling you’re being watched.

6)  Google is awesome.  Yes, I know – if I wanted to shield myself from prying eyes, I really shouldn’t use Google.  It’s hard not to, though. Their products are awesome:  Gmail, GoogleDrive, GoogleChrome, GoogleVoice, GooglePlay.  I use them all – which makes me question why I didn’t use Blogspot now that I think about it.

So there you go, clboss.net is now ‘webbed’ to Google.  Go forth and explore…

Riffing off of Monday’s post, I’d like to start a weekly feature called ;World Wide Web Wednesday’.  More than just posting a ‘here’s a link I like’, I’d like to tell you a little more about myself through sites I regularly visit.  So without further ado, today’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…

www.afl.com.au –  the Australian Football League

Back in the 1980’s when I was playing football (American football), I had practice every Saturday morning.  On one occasion while waiting for my ride, I flipped through the channels on the television and landed on ESPN.  Those of you my age may remember the days when ESPN had programs on in the morning other than SportCenter like business news.  Mornings on the weekend were the province sports around the world. Saturday morning at 7 was Australian Rules Football.

Just imagine, a teenage boy from an area so behind the times that soccer was considered as a potential vehicle for communist infiltration (it was the Eighties, after all) standing there with shoulder pads in hand watching ‘footy’.  Large groups of people wearing winter clothes in August watching men wearing nothing but shorts and sleeveless shirts running around with an over-inflated football. The caught the ball, punted the ball, bounced the ball off the ground, passed the ball by punching it, and, ultimately, kicked it between two large sticks and two smaller ones at the end of the field.  After scores, goal judges at the end with their white coats and fedoras would run out, straighten their coats, an point their fingers like a gun whenever someone scored were something out of another time.  The fans right behind would shake their mammoth poms poms up and down in celebration.  It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

It was AWESOME.

Saturday mornings during the season saw me watching half an hour of highlights followed by half and hour of the game of the week.  I was hooked, so it was profoundly disappointing when ESPN stopped airing the program.

It was nearly twenty years before Aussie rules and I crossed paths again.  I worked a part-time job on Saturday midnight shift where I had nothing to do but sit around and wait for the phone to ring a time or two during the night.  Surfing the internet, I eventually ran across the site listed above.  During that year, completed games were streamed across the internet for free and I spent my entire night watching game after game.  When they finally put the videos behind a paywall, I listened to them on the radio.  Sure, some of my coworkers looked at me funny, but it helped me pass the time.  When I finally quit that job, the link was broken again as I did not have access to broadband at my home.

Today, I could watch almost half of the games live on cable in my living room or DVR them for later.  The games that I can’t get on cable I can watch for five bucks a week on the internet, even on my smartphone.  It’s a far cry from my childhood where you could watch half an hour of highlights at a set time each week.  The funny thing, now that I could watch them any time I want, I don’t watch them at all.  It seems that one doesn’t have time when you have children and a house and a dog and a blog.  Have I mentioned that I have too many hobbies.

It truly is a World Wide Web.

P.S.  My team?  St. Kilda.  They’re lovable losers, just like me.