Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2025, Adelaide)

My partner and I went off to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2025, Adelaide); and we both left fairly sad. It was a surreal experience, as there was literally a standing ovation from the crowd; but I've never felt more disengaged or out of touch with a story - I did not understand the gulf between the "more normie" audience experience and mine at all. It was weird, in that it didn't seem to understand grungey queer burlesque origins, it disneyified the main character but not as a villain (who I now understand is meant to be relatable only in that they are just as broken as you or I); and I completely missed half of the narrative having forgotten the salient points of the movie version. But it was a "packed" show with a high ticket price. I feel very mixed thinking about this vs the raw, authentic feel of seeing; say, sewer rat girl (https://www.gogosiobhan.com/srg) or the many talented baby drag performers doing their craft at now defunct places like my lover cindi. I don't know what to do with this, because I'm broadly a cis male attempting not to be a dick in the world. But there's fuck all reviews apart from press releases ("wickedly funny", "raw energy"); and I have a vague apprehension this is sucking attention and $ away from far better folx doing way better stuff, still with broad appeal. If you are looking for something a bit weird but with story and emotion, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere this fringe; ie https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/mel-mcglensey-is-motorboat-af2025 or

Tinkering with the SpeechSynthesis API in Mealie, Vue2

I'm fairly happy with Mealie, though every time I put down VueJS for a hot minute I forget about the pain of fighting the data binding behaviours.

Knocked together: https://github.com/mealie-recipes/mealie/pull/4997; and it seems to be one of the actually useful times I'd ever use this API. UX needs a bit more tinkering, to allow auto play or pausing, potentially speech recognition for various commands.

OpenStreetMap: How do we streamline the import proposal/data quality assessment flow?

Cross posted from https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/CloCkWeRX/diary/404717

How do we streamline the import proposal/data quality assessment flow?

Posted by CloCkWeRX on 29 July 2024 in English.

The problem

We are generating an increasing level of data as a society. An unstated goal of openstreetmap that many contributors subscribe to is “completeness” or “accuracy”, which works fine when you dataset is small, local and high level detail, but less so when scaled up to determining if every traffic light crossing in the world has tactile paving.

So naturally, automation and data imports are where people start to look; and very sensibly there’s a process to propose, review and ingest large datasets.

However, this relies on:

• Expertise and peer review
• Honesty and diligence of the importer to have and execute a QA plan
• A second level of QA tools and mappers to QA and maintain data

What could we do differently?

In the semantic web/linked data world, two big concepts emerged. The first is the semantic web layer cake, which talks about going from “machine readable” to “schemas” to “query” to “proof” to “trust”. In OSM terms these are poi, tags, overpass, a lot of tools like keep right or osmose, and at the moment, human boots on the ground survey.

The concept of 5 star open data is focused on the idea that we have a lot of data locked up in silos - and while it would be ideal to align it to every standard and have the highest quality possible data; 95% of the time it’s better to publish anything at all rather than wait until it’s perfect. So long as data consumers have an idea of the limitations, they can apply judgement when attempting to use it.

What is the current state?

A number of open data portals provide basic indicators of “5 star open data” quality.

In our wiki, we maintain documentation which describes the OSM community’s view on data quality of an external dataset.

We have tags for change sets describing the source.

What specifically would we change?

I’m proposing a set of tools or standard metadata for annotating external datasets and proposed/approved exports; so that editing and conflation tools can reason about the quality of data.

IE, if you have a dataset which is derived from OSM, corrects wrong tags and it has been human verified from a random sampling of 5% of the data? That’s a good candidate for letting a maintenance bot operate on this with minimal oversight, and is potentially 5 star quality.

Have a stream of AI generated shop names from street level imagery? Tag that was 2/5 and have flags for requiring human verification, even if it is one click approval.

What would be the impact?

By having these standards in place, tools that are typically used for bulk imports or conflation can add extra guard rails around the process; and from a community review/import approval perspective it becomes a discussion about the higher risk aspects of an import.

It also then greenlights a degree of automated maintenance activities - after data is imported and mappers are promoted to confirm accuracy in the ground; it then becomes lower risk to trust that data source for bots updating existing attributes.

My Smart Home Bluetooth Scale I bought from Aldi wants to revoke my right to protest

 

Nice try, clause 4.2.2.1 (6)! 

Home Assistant with Feedreader for Google Alerts (monitor a share), Planning Alerts (new developments in your area), Open Australia (what your local member says and does)

RSS is a really powerful tool. Google Alerts allows you to monitor for news and new results, and importantly output to an RSS feed.

Here I'm picking an Adelaide company I quite like; to monitor few news via their stock ticker:

Through HomeAssistant, you simply want to enable that RSS feed via the feedreader component.

Very quickly, you've suddenly got a push notifications:

This opens up a huge range of possibilities. Want to have your automation platform let you know when your local representative talks about cycling infrastructure?

What about automatically discovering your neighbour is going to knock down your fence via planning applications in your area?

   

Configuring Wifi for a Samsung Powerbot without the Remote

I bought a Powerbot vacuum a month or two ago, minus the power pack and remote.

I figured it would be straightforward, but ended up spending a lot of time tracking down an SLPS-250FFOT charger, then finally the AU adapter for it.

Only today did I manage to plug in my robot vacuum and... 

Immediately failed to install the SmartThings app on my Samsung A11. What the actual fuck. How is your legacy SmartThings classic app supported on this phone, but your rewrite isnt?

I installed the classic app, started and...

Error downloading countries list.

Why. What server did you kill off in June 2020 that you shouldnt have?

After a bunch of googling and an angry review later, I found my old S7 and installed the SmartThings app, as my battery dwindled rapidly.

Setup new device, vacuum, and.... wait what. Press the CLOCK button on the remote to put it into AP mode, so I can connect wifi?

I didnt get a remote. A replacement is $75AUD. My bargain bot is turning into a nightmare.

One forum poster suggested they got past this step, but not how.

It turns out if you switch it off with the emergency switch, and it has no wifi, it is open to configuration.

Oh thank god.

So now, with the help of a party hat and homeassistant, I have a robot vacuum that is cleaning my house when I leave for the pub.

Paywave/mobile payments for Chuggers

I dont like high pressure fake charity collectors; but a chap with a can collecting for something like MS; I trust a lot more - no getting my credit card details; if I say no; they wander on.

Around Adelaide there is a particularly entertaining lady who has a very big McCaw with her - her success rate must be fairly good.

Most of the time though these days; I have to say I have no spare change, only card.

So, dear lazyweb; can someone please make a QR code or similar "open url" kit; letting someone with a smart phone tip - be it through an app store like subscription; a one click donate with the web payments API; or the charity equivalent of a kickstarter.

What I want as a donator:
- Mutually shared identity. Who am I giving my $ to, and do they have a scumbag rating?
- No spam. My local animal shelter spends a lot on print/mailouts to prompt recurring donation. If I can tell them not to spend $5 on media but on their cause; thats better for all
- kickstarter like updates; *if* I opt in to a specific project.

Wanted: Owntracks clients as easy as Slack

Right now its tricky for groups of cyclists to coordinate.  It's very easy to get split,  and hard to meet a group mid ride.

Owntracks solves a lot of this;  but setting up your own mqtt broker is tricky.  Some hosted options exist,  but then configuring is tricky for non tech users - remote config/config import helps alot; but its not perfect.

Secondly,  I have multiple groups I want to share my location with for different purposes.

I really wish the owntracks clients were as easy as the slack mobile clients - easy team swapping,  easy signin.

Strava game idea: CTF

Foursquare made me think about this, with its checkins and mayorships - it's basically just CTF, but an individual game.

At the same time as that is happening, Strava is posting challenges; people are everesting, and groups naturally form around the sport.

So why not use the strava API to detect time spent since someone climbed a particular hill, and give the score as time + elevation * number of people who climbed it on your 'team'.

Now if only I wasn't riding so much that I could implement a prototype :(

Getfridged implementation

That took a while!