Author: Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
Watched "Tiger King" Not Your Average Joe from Netflix
Directed by Rebecca Chaiklin, Eric Goode. With Bhagavan Antle, Carole Baskin, Howard Baskin, Susan Bass. Met Joe Exotic, the gun-toting operator of an Oklahoma big cat park. He's been accused of hiring someone to kill his chief rival Carole Baskin.
I’ve met all too many Joes. He may seem like a caricature to many, but there are a lot of him out there. The entirety of this seems to me like a replaying of the right/left political battle, but translated immediately into culture and with a more extreme bent. Even the promo poster properly puts Joe Exotic on the right and Carole Baskin on the left.
Watched "Star Trek: Picard" Maps and Legends from CBS All Access
Directed by Hanelle M. Culpepper. Without the support of Starfleet, Picard turns to Dr. Agnes Jurati and his estranged colleague Raffi Musiker for help in finding the truth about Dahj, unaware that hidden enemies are also interested in what he'll find.
I have to wonder if there are at least two previously “inactivated” sentient androids roaming around, how many more might there be that we don’t know about? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? … What happens when they become “activated”? Could make for a great plot twist at the end? Let’s see.
Watched "Star Trek: Picard" Remembrance from CBS All Access
Directed by Hanelle M. Culpepper. Fourteen years after retiring from Starfleet, Jean-Luc Picard, still haunted by the death of Data, is living a quiet life on his family vineyard when a woman comes to him for help.
Not as much of the morality tale that previous incarnations of Star Trek have been. This does have an anti-AI bent that should be interesting to follow, so maybe a bit of a modern day morality play here.
RSVPed Attending WordPress IndieWeb Online Meetup

Interested in the Indieweb, but you already have a WordPress site? Do you have a WordPress website or thinking of starting one?

Whether you’re a blogger, coder, designer, or just someone who wants to improve their presence on the web, if you have a WordPress site and want to add Indieweb functionality to it, this is the meetup for you.

Expand your reach, improve your connection with your audience. Make it easier to interact with your website. Have better control of your web presence.

With recent events keeping many of us at home, what better time is there to connect your presence on the web to others?

  • 7:00-7:15 - Introductions
  • 7:15-7:45 - overview of Indieweb tools and WordPress
  • 7:45-9:00 - Open Discussion/Chat/Support
Read IndieWeb and Webmentions by Chris Coyier (CSS-Tricks)
The IndieWeb is a thing! They've got a conference coming up and everything. The New Yorker is even writing about it:

Om Malik writes about a renewed focus on his own blog:
“My first decree was to eschew any and all analytics. I don’t want to be driven by “views,” or what Google deems worthy of rank. I write what pleases me, not some algorithm. Walking away from quantification of my creativity was an act of taking back control. ❧

I love this quote.
Annotated on March 30, 2020 at 10:49AM

What I dwell on the most regarding syndication is the Twitter stuff. I look back at the analytics on this site at the end of every year and look at where the traffic came from — every year, Twitter is a teeny-weeny itty-bitty slice of the pie. Measuring traffic alone, that’s nowhere near the amount of effort we put into making the stuff we’re tweeting there. I always rationalize it to myself in other ways. I feel like Twitter is one of the major ways I stay updated with the industry and it’s a major source of ideas for articles. ❧

So it sounds like Twitter isn’t driving traffic to his website, but it is providing ideas and news.

Given this I would syndicate content to Twitter as easily and quickly as possible, use webmentions to deal with the interactions and then just use the Twitter timeline for reading and consuming and nothing else.

Annotated on March 30, 2020 at 10:51AM

Read Zoom is bad and you should feel bad (jwz.org)
This is the only video phone I have time for. I don't want to talk to you people, let alone see you. FFS. Apparently all of you are diving headlong into the nightmare that is video conferencing, and "Zoom" seems to be the poison of choice these days, so you should know that it's terrible: Violet Blu...
Read Create Zettel from Reading Notes According to the Principle of Atomicity (Zettelkasten Method)
I separate collecting from processing because I don’t hack everything that pops up in my mind while I read a text into my computer. Instead, I take notes on paper.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
—Steve Jobs (via lifehacker and Zettel no. 201308301352) ❧

in other words, it’s just statistical thermodynamics. Eventually small pieces will float by each other and stick together in new and hopefully interesting ways. The more particles you’ve got and the more you can potentially connect or link things, the better off you’ll be.
Annotated on March 23, 2020 at 04:36PM

Reposted a tweet by Stephen Downes (@oldaily) Stephen Downes (@oldaily) (Twitter)
Thanks for the shout out (and the Webmention) Stephen!
I have a few subscriptions to bulk products on Amazon that ship every 2-6 months or so and yesterday was the drop date for my 3 pack of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. My dog food in the same order should arrive on Tuesday, but the wipes aren’t estimated to arrive until April 27-29. Apparently the coronavirus scare has too many people stockpiling. Ugh.
Watched "The West Wing" What Kind of Day Has It Been from Netflix
Directed by Thomas Schlamme. A stealth fighter is shot down over Iraq, leading to Bartlet ordering a military rescue as Toby worries about his brother trapped on a space shuttle orbiting the Earth. CJ deals with the ramifications of misleading the press about the rescue as the staff prepares for a town hall meeting that night. The town hall meeting goes well until the President leaves...and shots ring out.