TrickJarrett.com

I frequently wake up with songs stuck in my head. This was today's, Linkin Park - Breaking Habit.

Push to move King County elections to even-numbered years likely headed to voters in November

This headline left me confused as to why the use of even-years would matter. Is it a quirk of human behavior or something? Phases of the moon? Dodging most Cicada events? El Nino?

No. The article finally points out the logical reason for this change in the fifth paragraph.

Over the past 20 years, King County voter turnout in even years — when presidential, gubernatorial and congressional elections are held — has averaged 77%. Voter turnout in odd-numbered years has averaged 47%.

Bill Gates is not an NFT Bro

“Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely,” he offered when asked about the subject, referring to the totally legit Bored Apes Yacht Club. Understandably, Gates appears far more interested in investments that generate tangible, real returns for societies and economies, adding, “Anyway, I’m used to asset classes like a farm where they have output, or a company where they make products.”

I look back at the rise of Bitcoin. I thought it was a legit thing at the start and an opportunity for making money, but I wasn't in a position to do so. Now, over a decade later, I look at Crypto and these NFTs and shake my head.

I think Bill's criticism is right but also falls short of hitting on its inherent problems. Even aside from the energy consumption for these (granted, that is getting better in some cases), the promise of "DeFi" falls short in many ways.

Tech folks are fighting to make this a real solid part of the tech world, but it hasn't caught on. And, as lewd as it may be, one of the biggest signs to me that Crypto has a long road ahead is that the canary of adult entertainment has not yet moved into it. Adult entertainment has a history of trailblazing new technology and while there are some Crypto attempts with it - nothing that has taken off.

Edit: CNN also has a story about Bill Gates' dislike for NFTs.

"I do think people get bought into these manias, who may not have as much money to spare," Gates said. "So I'm not bullish on bitcoin."

To Build: YT Feed -> Podcast Feed

Edit: The Podsync Github project looks promising, will have to investigate.

"Why I Love the Un-American Football"

I will eventually migrate the entire post over, but for now, it seems fitting to link to my old Wordpress blog for the article I published during the 2014 World Cup.

It's Alive!

After roughly three hours of coding I have a 130 line Python script that will snag the videos on my "To Watch" YouTube playlist, convert the files to mp3s, generate a podcast XML file, and then upload them all to my server.

Now I can use a podcast app while I'm driving and listen to these files. I had a way of listening to them while I drove but it was a process which required me picking up and interacting with my phone, it didn't integrate with Android Auto. This script will now allow that.

This is definitely an MVP hacky solution. But, it's a hacky solution that gets the job done. As of now, I'll just run it from my laptop. No need to set this up on the server as an automated script. The frequency is such that I add 1-3 videos to the list in a week. Right now it has 19 videos on it. So plenty of backlog and I can probably just do it as a weekly task and I'll be fine.

Also, jeez, I forget how easy Python is to work in. I do the majority of my web coding in PHP, but it was nice to lean heavily on the existing Python libraries for this one.