Jamie Thingelstad

Appears that OpenAI isn’t keeping up with the ChatGPT Extension launch in Apple Intelligence today. Trying to sign in with my account for the extension.

Getting a massive overhaul of Shortcuts support in OmniFocus 4.5 this morning is like an early Christmas present! I whipped up a quick “Add to List” shortcut to try it and love the new interfaces. They are significantly more intuitive. 🎁

I have half-jokingly said for years that I wish there were professional scratchers, sort of like massage therapists, but to scratch your back! Then in today’s NextDraft:

“A small but growing field of scratchers are making a living off their nails, hoping there’s a healthy market of people who will pay $100 or more an hour to do what a spouse or wooden spoon will do for free. Professionals contend they’re not just scratching itches. They say they’re helping people achieve a level of relaxation that is beyond the reach of a kitchen utensil or loved one. They drum up interest by posting videos of clients oohing and aahing in candlelit rooms.” WSJ (Gift Article): How to Make $100 an Hour Scratching Someone’s Back.

I made Banana Bread tonight. It seems I cook so rarely that everyone else was flabbergasted that I did it. So I decided it should get a blog post since it was such a special event. 😂

The 2024 St. Olaf Christmas Festival was amazing today! Mazie is in the St. Olaf Chapel Choir and was part of the Christmas Festival this year. It was a great program with beautiful performances by all.

The performance we saw was recorded and will be available online on December 18th.

On our walk around Lake Harriet this morning Tammy and I saw this rare Bald Eagle in the city. It was perched and analyzing the ice line for easy prey.

I love to see new blogs being created. In the spirit of Christmas, I’m gifting five 1-year subscriptions to micro.blog for readers of the Weekly Thing (announced in WT304). These folks can then get their blogs going and in January I’m going to share links and introduce each of them. Fun! 🤩🎁🎄

When I decided to get a hot tub one of my buying criteria was making sure I can monitor and control the spa from my phone. Yesterday I got the Bullfrog X8 connected. The app itself isn’t fancy but does the things you need it to do including changing modes and locking the controls.

I was excited to see there is now a watchOS app for Tesla! It can access all car functions and pair as the key to the car. Unfortunately I need to wait for an update to the cars before it will work though. Soon!

Trying Five Farms Irish Cream Liqueur for the first time. Delicious! The cream is incredible. The whiskey smooth. Straight from County Cork. Even the bottle is cool. This may ruin me from regular Bailey’s.

The start of a list. Social media is…

• Antisocial
• Totalitarian
• Addictive
• Controlling

Did some work today with my new EGO Power+ 18" chain saw and thought it was awesome. Electric is so much easier for this, and it sliced through logs with no issues at all. Good weight and felt super comfortable to work with.

The Magic Pines Retreat is up and running. First time getting to use the spa and sauna.

The 2024 holiday season can now officially start with another great New Standards Holiday Show tonight. Dessa was the big guest appearance this year.

I created a Twin Cities IndieWeb list on BlogFlock. Let me know if you have sites that should be added! I feel a desire to get an IndieWeb meetup going in the Twin Cities.

I ran across BlogFlock, a new service by Raphael Kabo that takes a social approach to RSS feeds, and decided to give it a look. BlogFlock is entirely built on open RSS feeds and allows users to create lists of RSS feeds that others can then follow. Think of it as a way to build a custom timeline using RSS in the open. It isn’t a Feed Reader because it isn’t just your feed or list and there is no read or unread status. It is more in the spirit of a “river of news” feed that anyone can use.

I was having fun with it and decided to create a list I’ve always wanted for Manuel Moreale’s excellent People & Blogs project. I created a BlogFlock list for People & Blogs and yes, I actually added all 66 blogs to the list (some exceptions noted below). That wasn’t super fun but it is done and adding each new one is simple enough.

I had previously thought of doing something like this in Feedbin but it isn’t public so it kind of missed the point. I wanted something more like a “river of news” for it. So BlogFlock was a perfect approach.

It seems to be working really well and I like the way it works. Check out the People & Blogs List and give it a look.

Some notes for BlogFlock.

1. You should be able to subscribe to the RSS feed for the list itself. In this way BlogFlock could be an aggregator and then I could add that lists aggregated RSS feed to my feed reader.
2. You for sure should be able to create a list by importing an OPML file.
3. Lists should be exportable via OPML as well.
4. The description for a blog in a list is hopefully scoped just to that list. So if I add the same feed to two different lists I would want a different description for each one.
5. You should be able to manually reorder the blogs in a list.
6. It could handle posts without titles a bit better.

On this list itself it contains all 66 blogs that have been highlighted in People & Blogs thus far, with these exceptions:

• P&B 9: Ray Thomas has no RSS feed.
• P&B 43: Devastatia has adult content so I left it out.
• P&B 60: Steyn Viljoen has no RSS feed.

PS: It turns out Manu has a similar People & Blogs List on Feedland.

The SPS Observation Station is ready for Cyber Monday 2024!

I saw this graph on Tyler Cowen’s blog and it blew my mind how much is “alone”. In the comments someone did a stack area version which is much more readable.

We need to spend less time alone. If that isn’t possible, this is one area I think AI could be “helpful”. Spend time talking to AI?