Ross's Micro Blog

It’s been a while since I did a “The Week”, but I enjoy doing it. So here’s three weeks’ worth of projects, posts and pins all at once (it’s not as long as it sounds).

https://rosswintle.uk/2018/10/the-weeks-1st-8th-and-15th-october-2018/

Friday last week was 90% fighting unhelpful hosting companies and 10% trampolining. I intend to reverse this this week!

I can’t say this strongly enough. ONLY people who REALLY NEED the administrator role in WordPress should have it.

If you have lots of users, open WordPress now; review the list; demote as many people as possible to non-admins.

Given up on my third Fitbit (replaced under warranty twice). They are clearly only designed to last for a year. Back to beautiful analogue!! 😃

Beat the Street, by the way, is a “game” to get people moving. There are 174 “Beat Boxes” all around Swindon. Tapping them gives you points. There are challenges, prizes, leaderboards. EVERY school child in Swindon has a card/fob. Free to play!

https://beatthestreet.me/swindon

Note: I’m under NO illusion that the success of Beat the Street is down to it’s physicality – cards, fobs, boxes, lights, noises, surprises! – and the social engagement. This prototype alone does not make the game!

Last week, I did manage to complete a functional Beat the Street clone with virtual “boxes” + smartphones. Less than a days’ effort. Needs to look nicer (I want animation!!), but, with the exception of “teams” this basically works!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69NwTgJrMlc

Here’s the Press Ups video: Trying something new: short videos on command line basics for beginners. Let me know if this is a useful start & I’ll do more!

https://press-ups.com/2018/10/command-line-terminal-basics-1-getting-started-and-finding-how-commands-work-with-man/

Things I did last week, on my day off, while my baby napped:

1. My “Virtual Beat the Street” clone now has a back-end and awards points!
2. Press Ups video production!

Gaaah! Honestly feel like this Mojave update is intended to slow my Mac down so I have to (finally) upgrade. SO frustrating. Hope this improves with some app/OS updates soon.

Note that toggling Dark Mode on a Mac is also possible with Alfred. There’s several workflows around for doing this. Or make your own with this AppleScript: https://cl.ly/e5c25ca8790f

Neat. A Mac App for toggling dark mode with a single click: https://github.com/HarshilShah/Nocturnal

Good grief my Mac is slow after the Mojave update. Used to wake from sleep in seconds. Now takes a minute or two. BUT battery life while sleeping seems longer. Is “deeper sleep” a feature?

Genuinely curious – does having an orange flashing light actually mean that no road laws apply, as this guy who’s 95% blocking a crossing at a busy and dangerous junction suggests?

Been neglecting the Micro blog, so maybe need a splurge of posts…

But also:

My goodness, it’s easy to make a geocaching-/Pokemon Go-type location check-in game.

And:

How on earth do other game (and fitness app!) makers prevent cheating by geeks? Do they encrypt/encode API requests or something? How does no one cheat at Strava?

CONS:
Not everyone (especially young kids) has smartphones and can play
Easy to cheat (esp if you’re a techie like me!)
Lack of physicality when tapping

It would still make for a good ongoing competition between adults, but the school thing would be lost.

Lunchtime thinking: I have a nearly complete front-end for a virtual Beat the Street clone. But building it has made clear the pros and cons of the virtual game idea.

PROS:
Low cost (to run it)
Little infrastructure
More flexible boxes (put them wherever you like!)

My son has made a book. Well, he’s made several. He wants to publish this one. It’s on a topic that ONLY he is enthusiastic about. What he’s made is INCREDIBLE for a 6 year old, but how to tell him it wouldn’t be published without making it sound like it’s rubbish?

A little write up of my tinkering with Geolocation APIs and seeing how hard it would be to build a “virtual” Beat the Street game:

https://rosswintle.uk/2018/09/beat-the-street-virtual-tinkering/