Life In Mono

Yesterday I posted a general update containing a picture of some "work in progress" (WiP). Now I don't normally post WiP shots but I was testing my new tripod and the pictures were was so good it would have been a shame not to include at least one of them. It helped that the figures were the excellent 15 mm 3D prints of Arab camel riders from Red Copper.

To publicise my post I shared the picture on Bluesky, where I am vexillia.me.uk, and the Society of Ancients forum. To my surprise it generated quite a decent response. As the likes rolled in (it was more of trickle really) I started messing about with the image. In the end I removed the background and produced a monochrome version:

Have a play with the slider to compare and contrast (desktop only) then read on for an interesting painting tip.

DuckDuckGo, Firefox And Containers

Introduction

I make a lot of use of Firefox containers in my daily workflow via two extensions:

• Multi-Account Containers. This allows users to separate different online identities into colour-coded tabs, keeping cookies and data isolated for each account. This helps manage multiple accounts, such as work and personal, without needing to switch browsers.
• Temporary Containers. This allows users to open tabs in disposable containers, isolating data like cookies and storage for enhanced privacy. These containers are automatically deleted after use, helping to prevent tracking across different websites.

In particular, I use it to open all my DuckDuckGo searches in a specific container. It's not because DuckDuckGo is likely to be tracking me, but just to be doubly sure they can't.

I have DuckDuckGo set as my default search engine. Every time I open a new tab I can type a search query and the results are shown in a specific container. When I follow a search link it's opened in a temporary container which is deleted when I close the tab: ideal for preventing the build up of cookies and site data.

Until recently, that is.

AI And Event T-Shirts

Introduction

I've seen lots of event t-shirts & polo shirts: both printed and embroidered. I began to wonder just how hard could it be? To find out, I designed, and had printed, something for this year's King in the North at Haxby in October.

The main problem was the artwork. I'm not really gifted with a pencil, so I had to turn to the new AI tools to compensate for my lack of skill.

Now read on for all the gory details.

Messing With My Phone

Introduction

Whilst setting setup my wife's new smartphone, I (re)discovered the delights of FOSS accessed via F-Droid for Android.

I know this isn't for everyone but I wanted to install simple, and ad-free, radio and media players. Having found suitable apps I had a look round to see what else was recommended.

I ended up installing quite a few apps on my own phone; not just the players above but a plain text note app, a password manager and a peer to peer synchronisation tool. I've been looking for the latter for sometime and it's allowed me to sync my desktop & phone without using a (costly) cloud service.

ADLG Player Aids

Since 2021 I've been using my own, two page, game setup sheet at competitions. I've even played against people who use it regularly too!

ADLG Spreadsheet Hell

Introduction

My love of a good spreadsheet and a pretty data table has become far more widely known than I ever imagined. Recently, it led me into attempting something I don't normally do. It was true test.

I was asked to repair a spreadsheet from a UK competition. It wouldn't pass the online tests required before its inclusion in the Art de la Guerre (ADLG) database. The organisers had cut and pasted data leading to all sorts of errors on testing.

Checking the data for a five game event with 32 players was a task and a half! I also discovered that xls files produced by non-Microsoft programs invariably fail the online tests with multiple errors, suggesting differing file headers as the source of the problem.

Blogger Workflow

Background

Back in the mists of time I used to write my own web pages in a simple text editor then upload them to a web server by FTP. Later I graduated to a more complex editor and added CSS to my repertoire.

None of this was really required when I started blogging in 2007 with Blogger. However, I began to find Blogger's WYSIWYG editor increasingly difficult to control. I switched to editing the "raw" HTML to get a consistent look.

Until recently, I would write a blog item directly in Blogger's HTML editor. I only switched to the WYSIWYG view for spell checking and final proof reading.

Speed, or rather the lack of it, kills

At the beginning of this year I became increasingly frustrated with Blogger's HTML editor. Not because it's a bad editor, I actually really like it, but because it distracts me.

I get tied up with HTML tags rather than writing. To speed things up I have some keyboard shortcuts that add paragraph tags and the like. Despite this, writing was still slower than I'd like.

Crossposting To Bluesky

Introduction

Last weekend saw a sudden surge in wargamers leaving Twitter for the Bluesky social network. I wonder why?

Thanks to Henry Hyde creating a starter pack for Historical Miniatures Wargaming I have acquired nearly 150 new followers in 48 hours. Bluesky starter packs allow new members to follow up to 150 people with one click. It's a nice feature.

So I thought it was time to automate posting from my blogs to Bluesky via their RSS feeds. I have already done this for the Fediverse so I had some idea what was required.

What follows applies to Linux. Windows and Mac users look away now.

Podcasts, Podget, Audacious, And Linux

For over ten years I've been using gPodder to manage my subscriptions to music and hobby podcasts.  Recently, I realised that gPodder was using almost 0.25 Gb of memory all the time just to monitor podcast feeds every hour.  This seemed an excessive overhead.

To make matters worse I'd developed all sorts of different podcast habits; copying music podcasts to an archive folder etc etc.  The habits weren't onerous but I began to wonder if there was a different way to do things with less intervention on my part.

From now on this gets "techie".  So, if this isn't your thing, look away now!

AI, ADLG And The Madaxeman

I'm sure we have all noticed the torrent of news about AI.  I've remained sceptical, but I've found some of the AI image processing tools to be well worth the trouble. Many of my recent images have been processed with the help of such tools.  But that's not the subject of this post.

Introduction
I recently, stumbled across www.perplexity.ai: billed as an AI assisted search engine.  I started using it to research costume details for my Hellenistic project and I was impressed.  The results are delivered in sentences with reference links and images (if appropriate).  It also says if it doesn't know the answer; a nice touch.

ADLG & the Madaxeman
Being curious, I created a few other searches including some related to Art de la Guerre (ADLG).  Of course, they all contained a reference to the hub of Tim Porter's burgeoning mega-media-empire: www.madaxeman.com.

Much later, I was looking at Tim's latest battle reports when I spotted a link to his 2021 appearance on the God's Own Scale podcast during which Tim describes the history of www.madaxeman.com.  So, whilst painting, I listened to the episode again.  The portion where Tim describes the somewhat random (haphazard?) genesis of his site was particularly interesting as was the description of his scatter gun approach to content creation and social media adjuncts.

Now Tim's been very influential in promulgating ADLG both in person and through his website.  So, putting two unrelated topics together, I wondered how the AI would go about rating the influence of www.madaxeman.com on ADLG and whether it (?) could identify any important factors underpinning Tim's influence.

A Resurgence of Blogging?

In this post, which I admit falls into the category of "a blogger writing about blogging", I want to discuss the history of, and one possible future for, blogging from the standpoint of a wargamer and hobby blogger.

I'd also like to touch on the impact of the ever changing world of social media on the popularity of blogs.

I know I've been writing about this, and related topics, a lot recently, so if it's not your cup of tea just skip this post.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Quality Time

Anyone who spends any time online knows the benefits of using the Internet as well as the annoyances.  The key is to strike a balance between the two, and ever so slightly in favour of the former.

Recently, I've been reappraising my own use of the Internet; from social media, through hobby forums, to online chat.  This was prompted by a realisation that sometimes I would be "clicking for clicking's sake".

Here are two things that I've done in the last week to improve the quality of my time online and free up time to devote to my hobbies.

Twitter, RSS feeds and "Getting a Life"

As I've said before, things change and sometimes not always for the better.  Recently, I've been trying to figure out what to do about the changing nature of Twitter.

Background
I've used Twitter since Dec 2010 which, for a web service, is a long time.  I recently wrote about my dissatisfaction with the current direction of Twitter and how I'm using Mastodon more and more.

Since then Twitter has got worse.  The tools I use(d) to make Twitter bearable (IFTTT & Tweetdeck) have been adversely affected by the recent changes and free tools are disappearing fast.

I've also been increasingly concerned that my use of Twitter has become a waste of time.  So my plan is to stop using Twitter; if at all possible.  I've been cutting back my usage for a while now but I was still checking Twitter too many times a day: not ideal.

Hardware

Things change and sometimes not always for the better.  Recently, I've been trying to figure out why my desktop computer kept dropping its connection to the internet.

Social Media Changeover

Way back in 2021 I wrote about how I use Twitter.  I say way back because I'm using "technology time" which passes far quicker than real time.  Needless to say, how I use it has changed significantly once again.  I'm using Twitter less and using Mastodon more.

Blog Tidy Up & Future Proofing

Over the last week I've gone through all 470 odd pages on this blog to: 

• Remove dead links to long defunct sites like dmbmm.org.uk & the DBMMList on Yahoo! Groups.
• Check for malformed links (of which there were quite a few in the early days).
• Correct various errors in the html code (my sloppy editing).
• Remove a few early pages that only pointed to defunct sites.
• Future proofed how internal links are coded (a major task).

So, as always, if you find any broken links please leave a comment and I will endeavour to fix them.

How I Use Twitter

I've been considering writing this post for quite some time.  The main reason for my procrastination being I wasn't sure how useful it would be to anyone else.  It's a bit "techie" but not overly so.  After much thought I decided that if it's useful to just one other person then it'll have been worth it.

The first thing to note is that I'm essentially a desktop user of Twitter.  I do use a tablet but I don't have, or want, a smartphone.  This makes a big difference in how I use Twitter.  If you always use Twitter on your smartphone you can stop reading now.

Tech Hint: Image Zoom

This site is based on Google's Blogger. One of the features I like is the slide show. You know the feature; you click on an image link and get a new screen showing all the images in a post. Often the images are larger than that shown in the body of the post.

Sometimes this isn't the quickest feature to use especially when there are a lot of photos. So I was pleased to find an extension for Firefox (& Chrome based browsers) that automatically shows a larger image when the mouse hovers over an image like this:

I've already found this useful and I haven't even looked at all the options yet. It works with Blogger, Twitter and Facebook and many other site. Check out the extension's home page.

Site Improvements (Index)

This is not really a hobby related post.  It's also going to get very "techie" very quickly.

I've spent the last two or three days trying to make sense of the growing number of posts here.  As a result I have had to dive deep into the bowels of Google's API for Blogger.  I thought it would be simple!  My efforts are presented here to help any bloggers interested in doing likewise.

All avowedly "non-techie" people should look away now.

Yahoo! Groups - RSS Feeds Return

In August I wrote about the demise of the RSS feed feature associated with the new interface for Yahoo! Groups. In the intervening three months I've tried many ways to follow my groups but most were rubbish. Eventually I resorted to using email but it didn't really fit with the way I work and I started looking for a way to get my RSS feeds back.

When I started to use email I set up a filter (in Gmail) to label all group messages and mark them as read. This solved half the problem; I had all the group messages neatly filed and I didn't have masses of new mail messages interfering with my working day. What I needed was a way to convert these emails to an RSS feed then I'd have a full solution. I know this is possible as Gmail used to do this but sadly it doesn't any longer.