Categories
Blog Web Design

We can rebuild him…

Well, it’s time, I think. One does not simply make a web site, one has to continually update it. And with WordPress releasing 7.0, it’s time that I get on board with the features that I have been ignoring since 3.5 or so.

Time to redesign the site, and get it working with block-based themes, patterns, and all that sort of thing.

Step 1: finally add a custom logo. This one is a work-in-progress based off of my original text logo from 2000, along with a recent graphic design. Fortunately, this is managed independently of the overall WordPress theme.

Step 2: Unpublish the broken pages with nothing on them. Some of those are supposed to auto-generate, and they don’t. Others are just broken.

I’ve been using the WordPress Twenty-Twenty theme for a while, and it looks like what I really need is to upgrade to Twenty-TwentyFive, which not only includes blocks, but Patterns and Templates/Template Parts. This should make things more robust when switching between newer templates.

Screenshot showing 2011 design of this site, based on Constructor theme.
The site in its former glory back in 2011. A total nightmare on mobile, and kinda wonky looking, to be honest. Not the worst it’s looked, though.

There are a bunch of elements that went away when I got rid of my older theme based off of Constructor, and I want them back, as long as they don’t break mobile. Twenty-Twenty is not fully mobile responsive, I don’t think.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ll likely be doing this bit by bit. The design part is just one aspect, the other is revisiting what the site content should be.

Categories
Blog Cybersecurity

It’s always something, isn’t it?

It’s always something. Now it’s the tire pressure sensors spying on you. In a new paper being submitted to IEEE, researchers found that automobile tire sensors are broadcasting unencrypted identifying data that can be easily sensed on a roadway with a $100 radio receiver and used to track vehicles. The data packet contains a unique identifier for the vehicle, and includes the tire pressure readings themselves, which could be used to determine if the vehicle was carrying passengers or cargo.

Just another example of the security risks involved with the over-instrumentation in today’s cars. My experience with these tire pressure sensors has been that they are prone to failure and often inaccurate. But at least someone can get use out of them, I guess.

Categories
Blog Esoterica Music Uncategorized

A poetry Blast from the past

Ran across this tonight on YouTube while chasing an old ’80s song. This is one of a few spoken-word records that Harvey Kubernick produced in the early ’80s, and each one is a goldmine of LA punk artists and poets — John Doe, Henry Rollins, Wanda Coleman, and more. It’s one of those records that I don’t think ever made it to CD.

In case the embed doesn’t work , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu42tMcu93g. It’s a pretty good digitization with detailed liner notes about the 70 or so cuts. It was a double-record.

I have this on vinyl and I think two other 2 record sets from the series. One was called ‘Voices of the Angels,’ and the other ‘Freeway Sounds,’ if I recall correctly. I’ll have to dig deeper.

Categories
Blog Esoterica Music

TIL: the dark side of the Hokey Pokey

Sorry for the click bait-y headline, but couldn’t resist. It’s not all that dark.

How did I even get here? Well, today on bsky, someone posted the following quote:


My response was the following:


Of course, I had to look up who wrote the song, and what I found was that Larry LaPrise held the copyright, but that two other songwriters claimed authorship. This is just from the Wikipedia article, for all I know there is a whole rabbit hole of investigative reporting on the true origins of The Hokey Pokey, and indeed, even, what it is all about.

It reminds me of the similar controversy about the song ‘Rum and Coca-Cola’, copyrighted by Bobby Troop, but apparently also taken from other sources.

Update: I was right, there is a Rabbit Hole. Here’s some links to start, if you dare:

https://theoutline.com/post/565/the-writer-of-the-hokey-pokey-has-died-three-times

https://phonographia.com/Factola/Hokey%20Pokey.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey_Pokey

Categories
Blog social media

Today’s shadowban is tomorrow’s trend.

Today, ran across this article, which talks about how the future of culture is going to be built around things that algorithmic platforms reject. The article focuses mostly on copyright infringement, but I think the argument could be made for anything that is un-monetizable on social media platforms.

When you think about it, it’s a normal trajectory for subcultures. They start out as outsiders, then someone finds a way to present or expose it on traditional media. Case in point: the book that brought Hunter S. Thompson to the masses, “Hells Angels.” While I think there was already exploitation media made around bikers by then, it’s hard to imagine shows like “Sons of Anarchy” existing without there having been a ‘serious book’ about the subject. Now, there’s Harley-Davidson merch stores in tourist traps.

Online culture just accelerates this and drives things underground faster, plus provides the opportunity for the subculture to build its own platforms.

There may well be a template for this. Subculture first hides in plain sight, then gets exposed, then gets exploited, then gets filtered and sanitized, causing the less advertiser-friendly bits to hide somewhere else in plain sight.

This is a vast oversimplification, of course, and new types of media create new variations. I’ll explore this further someday.

This dance has long existed online, I remember that Usenet in the ’80s had a newsgroup called ‘net.culture.gay,’ and it was an eyeopener for anyone who wasn’t already in-the-know. It was both a gay safe space and a fairly open bridge for outsiders. Usenet, however, was a free service — the Internet hadn’t opened up beyond industry and academia, and there was no advertising, so no advertisers to offend. There was discussion there that couldn’t happen anywhere else at the time – not on TV, not in the letters page of a newspaper.

It’s harder and harder to imagine a truly free platform like those today. This was all paid for by taxpayers, in a corner of the defense budget (ARPAnet). Today’s content and scale costs real money, and with that comes gatekeepers.

But there will always be someone slipping under or jumping over the gate.

Categories
Music Uncategorized

Rainy day music

Enjoying WMFU Give the Drummer Radio today. The Dark Night Of the Soul show hosted by Julie is a perfect accompaniment for todays cold, cloudy, rainy day in Los Angeles.

You can catch the live stream at https://www.radiorethink.com/tuner/?stationCode=wfmugtd&stream=hi