Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: open source

  • Internet Radio Dreams

    Internet Radio Dreams

    This morning I’m dreaming of Internet Radio: My OWN Internet radio station patterned after the amazing example of ds106 Radio. Let me explain. In December 2012, I published the 3 minute photo story, “Live Internet Radio Broadcasting from a Bus.” In it, I shared “a story about webcasting a live radio show from a bus…

  • Social Media Text Prepper

    Social Media Text Prepper

    It is now possible to use generative AI / artificial intelligence platforms, like ChatGPT 4, to create simple to relatively complex web applications without knowing the precise syntax of programming languages. By formulating detailed prompts for the AI chatbot, it is possible to create code in various languages (including javascript and HTML) which the user…

  • Updating My Food Blog: Cook with Wes!

    The past two nights I’ve spent several hours updating my food and family recipe website sharing site, “Cook with Wes,” and I’m happy with the results at this point! I’ll recap my updates (in WordPress) in this post. I dabble in web design and WordPress customizations rather infrequently now, so this was a significant catalyst…

  • DVD Subtitles with Handbrake

    For the third year I’m teaching an adult class at our church, and I’m finding it helpful to use the free / open-source software program “Handbrake” to create short clips of videos we’re using in lessons from a DVD. It’s a bit tricky to select the correct options within the program to “burn in” the…

  • Ad Blocking Lessons Learned with Pi Hole, Google (Nest) WiFi and AppleTV

    Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a relatively inexpensive and straightforward way to block all the advertisements in YouTube and other apps on the AppleTV? (Besides paying a monthly subscription for YouTube Premium?!) Wouldn’t it be great if this same method provided advertisement and malware blocking for ALL Internet-connected devices on your home network?…

  • Using ffWorks and FFmpeg for Video Compression

    Almost every week on Wednesday nights I co-host “The EdTech Situation Room” (@edtechSR) webshow and podcast with my friend and fellow educator, Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach). My Thursday evening routine, therefore, usually includes post-production of the show so it’s shared on edtechSR.com, with both audio and video archive versions linked from Amazon S3. In this post I’ll…

  • Lessons Learned with Website eBook eCommerce Continue (August 2018)

    About 4 years ago, inspired by a local writer’s conference, I created a WordPress-powered website to independently sell digital copies of my books as well as offer a subscription-based video library of instructional how-to videos. I haven’t given that project much attention or “care and feeding” in awhile, since I transitioned to a new job…

  • 16 Years of Web Hosting Changes with WordPress and Other Web Platforms: The Lessons Continue

    This past December, I started the laborious and often stressful process of migrating my 40+ websites (mostly running WordPress) to a new web host. This time, I’m moving from a VPS (virtual private server) with Site5.com to a VPS with LiquidWeb… I’m not done with this migration process, but I’m about halfway finished, and have reached…

  • 5 Reasons You Should Join Me on Mastodon

    Mastodon is a relatively new social networking platform (released in October 2016) designed with a fundamentally different ethos and value set from the most popular networks of 2017 like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, etc. Similar to email, Mastodon is FEDERATED so anyone can setup and run a Mastodon server, or “instance,” but a Mastodon user…

  • WordPress OKC February 2017 Learning Points

    This evening I had an opportunity to attend a monthly WordPress OKC Meetup (@okcwpug) for the first time in many months, and as always I learned a bunch of new things. I archived my Tweets from the evening, shared mostly with the hashtag #WPOKC, in a Storify archive, which I’ll embed below. After many years,…