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Smaller Images for Weekly Thing

In the Journal section of the Weekly Thing I include any blog posts that I’ve made for that week. To keep things easy, I’ve always just linked to the same image files that are used on my blog. That has never been ideal since those images are much larger than what you would ideally include in an email.

I decided to try and solve this problem in Shortcuts and the amazing S3 Files. The basic approach I take to getting blog posts into the Weekly Thing is:

  1. Retrieve the RSS feed for www.thingelstad.com
  2. Find items in feed that are within the time period of this issue
  3. Convert each post to markdown and do some post processing to make it work in the newsletter better

To do this I would add another step after 3 to detect my own images in the posts, and do the following:

  1. Detect any URL’s that are uploads into my blog, and make sure to not grab any others.
  2. Retrieve the image file at that URL
  3. Resize it to 1,200 pixels on the “long edge”
  4. Add to S3 bucket for files.thingelstad.com in the right directory for this issue
  5. Replace the original image URL with the new URL

It wasn’t too hard to make all this work. After tweaking the regular expressions, and making sure that the replacement worked right it was working great.

Here is a snippet from my logs.

When I ran this to the Journal images in Weekly Thing 262 it was able to resize 28 images from an original size of 43 MB to 12 MB, saving 31 MB of download data!

This is a big win in two ways. First, when you open the Weekly Thing from 263 on your device will download way less data and need to use way less memory. Also, some email services apparently dislike it if emails reference images that are longer than 1,200 pixels on the longest side. Hopefully this little efficiency will also get finicky mail servers to be nicer to my emails.

This was only possible with the revamp I’ve been doing to my automation, and the ability to add this step in was a great result of those changes.

This post is part of the Shortcuts Collection.

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POAP 6798458 at Gnosis Chain Validator Survey Participants.

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Introducing Weekly Thing Forum

I’ve been sending the Weekly Thing for six years. Every week I will get a few replies from people about a specific article, topic, or comment from that week. Getting those replies is great, and sometimes I’ll get multiple replies on the same thing and think it would be interesting to extend this conversation. I’m putting the Weekly Thing Forum out there for just that reason, to create a broader dialog and to continue to learn together.

Plus I hope it is just fun, in an old-school Internet sort of way.

Before the Forum I have tried some very limited experiments to create some further dialog. I tried chat platforms like Telegram, Signal, SimpleX, and Wavelength Messenger. Only Telegram and Wavelength got more than a handful of people, and it just didn’t fit well. Chat platforms are very high frequency and that didn’t match well with the Weekly Thing. They don’t suit themselves to well thought out dialogue.

I played around with Reddit and Discord as well. Discord is way too much of a commitment. Reddit is crazy land. So neither of those were good fits either.

Then I got an email from a Weekly Thing reader, Barry Hess. Barry is one of the principles behind Good Enough where he and some other like minded technologists are passionate about creating principled products. Ponder is one of them. Barry reached out to see if I might want to use Ponder for the Weekly Thing. 🤔

The fun thing is that my friend Garrick Van Buren had already introduced me to Ponder via a group he had created. So I was familiar and thought it was a great, simple, clean and easy-to-use place to host a Forum. No privacy concerns. No algorithms. Just a place to connect with people in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

Over the summer I mulled this over and decided to give it a go!

So here we are, the Weekly Thing Forum!

I don’t know exactly where this will go. I think it would be great to continue dialog about articles that are in the Weekly Thing. It would be fun to do “Ask Me Anything” kind of things. It would be super to bring in additional perspectives. Overall, I’m hoping to increase connection and shared learning.

Thanks for checking it out! Thanks for reading the Weekly Thing! And thanks for being great!

Join the Weekly Thing Forum!

This messages is also posted in the forum.

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TeamSPS 2023 Kubb Tournament

Today we held our 5th Annual TeamSPS Kubb Tournament! This event has now become a real tradition and many of our team look forward to playing Kubb together in early fall every year.

We had 16 teams of 6 people, with a full registration of 96 players. Plus plenty of folks came down just to watch, hang out with team members, and cheer on the players.

The great thing about Kubb for a team event is that anyone can play, the game is quick to pick up, and I guarantee you that you are going to meet and talk to the other members of your team. The game is casual, and can be enjoyed by players of any age.

Some of our team really get into it. As the Tournament Director I’m responsible for calling matches, making rulings on anything questionable on the field. It is awesome to see the folks that really git into the spirit of Kubb.

This year we decided to up our game a bit and got 8 custom Kubb sets with SPS colors on the kings, and the logo etched into it. These amazing sets came from JP’s Backyard Games and he threw in some shirts that I got to hand out to some players as well.

It was a great afternoon to Throw Some Wood!

Just like previous years, we had a POAP for the event!

We played three Round Robin matches in four different groups (results at the end), and from the round robin we placed teams into four different brackets. The winners of each bracket got bragging rights for the year, and an awesome medal!

Bracket 1: Lead the Way

EDI Emperors (W) vs. Kubastank
The Kubb Nubbs vs. Kubbless (W)

EDI Emperors (W) vs. Kubbless

Bracket 2: Know More to Be More

Kubbcumbers vs. Simply the Best (W)
Kubbiks Rube vs. Kubb Me Up, Scotty (W)

Simply the Best (W) vs. Kubb Me Up, Scotty

Bracket 3: Win Today, Win Tomorrow

Ice Kubs (W) vs. Kubb Scouts
Lucky #13 vs. Knock’n Kubb Uff-da-bash! (W)

Ice Kubs vs. Knock’n Kubb Uff-da-bash! (W)

Bracket 4: Succeed Together

Kubb on the Cob vs. Kubb Your Enthusiasm (W)
Kubby-doo Where Are You? (W) vs. Kubb 2: Hyperkubb

Kubb Your Enthusiasm vs. Kubby-doo Where Are You? (W)

See: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, and 2018 tournaments.

Round Robin Results

Group A

Game 1:
Ice Kubbs (W) vs. Kubbcumbers
Kubb on the Cob vs. EDI Emperors (W)

Game 2:
Kubbcumbers vs. EDI Emperors (W)
Ice Kubbs vs. Kubb on the Cob (W)

Game 3:
EDI Emperors (W) vs. Ice Kubbs
Kubbcumbers (W) vs. Kubb on the Cob

Group B

Game 1:
Simple the Best vs. Kubastank (W)
Kubb Scouts (W) vs. Kubb Your Enthusiasm

Game 2:
Simple the Best (W) vs. Kubb Scouts
Kubastank (W) vs Kubb Your Enthusiasm

Game 3:
Kubb Your Enthusiasm vs. Simple the Best (W)
Kubb Scouts vs. Kubastank (W)

Group C

Game 1:
Lucky #13 (W) vs. Kubby-doo Where Are You?
The Kubb Nubbs (W) vs. Kubbiks Rube

Game 2:
Lucky #13 vs. The Kubb Nubbs (W)
Kubby-doo Where Are You? (W) vs. Kubbiks Rube

Game 3:
Kubbiks Rube (W) vs. Lucky #13
The Kubb Nubbs (W) vs. Kubby-doo Where Are You?

Group D

Game 1:
Kubbless (W) vs. Knock’n Kubb Uff-da-bash!
Kubb 2: Hyperkubb vs. Kubb Me Up, Scotty! (W)

Game 2:
Kubbless (W) vs. Kubb 2: Hyperkubb
Knock’n Kubb Uff-da-bash! (W) vs. Kubb Me Up, Scotty!

Game 3:
Kubb Me Up, Scotty! vs. Kubbless (W)
Kubb 2: Hyperkubb (W) vs. Knock’n Kubb Uff-da-bash!

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I love that the gang at Good Enough is playing with some things that remind me of the early days of the web. They have a thermal printer you can print to from a web page. So, I had to try it out. Barry posted my drawings and I grabbed copies for archival on my site too. 🤩

Now, what to print next!?

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Thanks to Paul’s Fireplace Wood I’m ready for fall and winter fires! I love that they have the domain firewood.com. 🔥

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Minnedemo 39 was awesome! It was great to see so many from our fabulous technology community, and to see the great demos that everyone shared.

Thanks to Caedence, Showcrow, Evergreen, Charles Edge, Request Metrics, and Raise a Hood for presenting!

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We had my step-dad Bruce over for dinner tonight with my his brother, my Uncle Tim. We were trying to recount the last time I had seen Tim and it was at least thirty years ago. The beard is amazing! 🎅

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Look up.

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This Athletic Brewing Waves of Sun is delicious. 🍻

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Weekly Thing is back from summer break. I sent issue 261 this morning!

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It is always a bittersweet day when we take the boat in for the fall. This summer was so full of travel, graduation parties, and other celebrations that we only got out on the water twice! We only got it out on June 10, only 98 days!

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Congratulations to all the 2023 Minnesota CIO ORBIE Award winners and nominees! 👏

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POAP 6790247 at SPS Kubb Tourney 2023.

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Feedforward. A new word to add to the word list.

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Decided to take the leap (both Tammy and I) and sign up for Peter Attia’s new Early program. I’ve learned a ton from his podcast, and Tammy has finished his new book Outlive (I’m still reading) and Early promises to be the best way to make it all actionable.

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Ready to cheer for Team USA vs Oman! ⚽️🇺🇸

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Pregame dinner at Yum! in St. Paul before the US Men’s National Team game at Allianz Field! 🇺🇸⚽️

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Spiral. Inspired by my brothers experimentation with this shot.

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First fire of the fall and first time using the Solo Stove Yukon. 🔥