When I write these in my local copies, I don’t put the date ranges on them, just the date they were written. Its one of the most pain in the butt parts of this because it means opening some sort of calendar. I mean, its not hard, but I really do not look at calendars a lot. At least not beyond “Day of the week”.
While I am rambling about things I don’t follow, I also don’t really follow the weather. Somehow, despite decades of data, and AI and all the magic pf technology, weather predicting still seems like a complete and utter toss up 90% of the time. I prefer to just, decide when I walk put the door, or over dress with hat and gloves or whatever, that can easily just be discarded.
On to this last week. It was of course, Thanksgiving week. We went down to my mother in law’s for the day, though no real fancy dinner or anything, just sandwiches, and doing various tasks around her house that needed done.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, I lied last week, I caught, part of, the Macy’s parade. It starts earlier than I thought. The antenna hook up went way better than expected. Despite that we sort of sit “downhill” because we are nearish the lake here, and the antenna itself isn’t even above the roof line, I can receive almost all of the channels I should be here. CBS which os very far is a little iffy at time, and PBS, which is probably the farthest, shows up but never locks in. But Fox, ABC, CW, the religeous channel, all tune in with all their subchannels.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving was very busy at the shop, which was nice. The town had a holiday event and it was “Small Business Saturday” so we actually had a regular run of customers. Many first timers and many who really liked the shop. It was a good sign, hopefully.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
I started posting these, a while back but they kind of fell by the wayside. I guess some of it just got covered in regular posting, and some of it ends up on the other blog, if I bother. Probably, I decided I didn’t really care. But maybe I should care. So here we are.
I have actually done a few of my “wishlist todo” projects this week. I have recently been hardcore digging through my too many bookmarks problem in Firefox. This has been an ongoing effort for a few months now, but I started on a phase two of this project this week. Specifically, I set up a separate bookmarking app, for some of these bookmarks. After some looking at options, I very lightly started using Raindrop.io, but I also remembered that I really want to not rely on other services that may randomly raise prices, limit features, or just plain close.
So instead, I set up LinkAce, in my docker set up. It was, surprisingly simple. Some of my attempts at docker set ups fizzle out. The biggest thing I have to watch for in the docker-compose files is for port use. Everything thinks its alone and wants to exist at port 80 or 8080. I have them numbered up now, 8080, 8081, 8082, etc.
The long term sort of idea.
Link Ace will be a sort of, well sorted repository of things that could be useful when I want to go look for them.
Anything that is a text or article gets clipped and dumped to my text archive.
It needs clean up, but I have been working on a series of markdown files that work as a sort of wiki for coding information.
Various bookmarked todos get put on a proper list. “To Read”, “To Watch” “To Play” etc.
Anything I may want to buy gets put in a big spreadsheet with pricing etc. I have actually already done this, since these bookmarks were already sorted together.
I have a zillion little projects bookmarked, these will all go in a list as well, or possibly (Probably) get sorted put into a Joplin notebook for each project. Like, sometimes I research a bit of a coding idea, them bookmark several different code snipped I may want to use.
Things I actually regularly use, will just stay in Firefox. The idea is to get Firefox itself down to maybe, 50 actual bookmarks. Not, 10,000. I am not sure I am exaggerating with that 10,000.
Anyway, projects this week, I got side tracked. I hung up an antenna on the side of the house today. I may put it on a proper mast later, but for now, I just stuck it on the leftover DirecTV mast that hangs off the back of the deck. I have not tested it yet. I doubt I get a ton of channels, but I should be able to get WAND and WBUI, which are both in town.
Everything else is like 40 miles away. I doubt I can get them with the antenna where it is. I literally have done this sort of thing for a living as my job for almost 20 years now. I have a “pretty good idea” of how well this placement will work. For now, it will work for what I want, which is the occasional need for local news, The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and maybe The Super Bowl.
I am not even going to be here for the Macy’s Parade, so that is… Kind of a bust.
Anyway, in the past, I could get a few channels just laying the antenna out in the deck and hooking it up. If I were super cool I could use some of the spiffy work tools I have to peak the signal etc. But I am not cool like that, also, the position won’t let me actually swing the antenna all the way around to point AT 90% of the towers in the area.
Another project I made a lot of headway on, because I can do it easily while playing Throne and Liberty. Years ago I purchased a bundle of Piano courses from a teaching website. I have been, for many years, meaning to go through and capture them with OBS for offline use, and just, archival in case that teaching website ever goes offline. YT-DL did not work annoyingly. Even using browser cookies. So a manual OBS recording, then clipping them apart in Clip Champ is the way.
In other less exciting news, I got new shoes. My old ones had a big hole in one side and I threw them out. I went to three whole stores, then bought some boring Sketchers, because I almost always buy Sketchers. Then today, I went to put on my old old old shoes to go work outside and discovered my “old old old work shoes”, are the same as my new shoes. Except the work shoes are all gross and filthy.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
So lately I have been a bit busy in the background helping my wife and daughter with a big project. They are opening up a vintage clothing store. They already sell online, but they are now working on opening a physical store as well. Technically, my daughter is opening up a store, and my wife is going to be running her online stuff out of the back. They have talked off and on about renting or buying a space and found a location a few months ago that fits their needs and budget.
They have done a lot more of the work than I have, mostly because they have more available time, but also because they seem to want to do a lot of it so they know its done the way they want. I have been doing a lot of little side projects though related to it and helping out with moving the totes of stuff they have to sell in store or online to the shop from storage.
One of the first big projects was stripping and refinishing the old wood flooring. The previous tenant was an HVAC shop and the floors were kind of gross and a bit rough. We rented an upright sander from Menards and I got to have the fun of running that for a few hours one afternoon. It was surprisingly easy to work actually. The hardest part was lifting it in and out of the van because its heavy as heck.
“Pro tip”, the handle, at least on the one we got, comes right off of you remove the locking bolt. Its much easier to transport in two pieces.
They spent the next few days doing additional detail sanding and then putting several coats of polyurethane down on the sanded floor. Its not perfect but it looks a heck of a lot better than it did.
The next major step was painting the walls, another project I didn’t participate in, mostly due to my day job.
I have constructed a few things though and still have more to do.
One thing we looked into was hanger organizers. Amazon had a few options, but we decided that we could just build a few. I bought up a bunch of PVC piping and constructed these stand up racks for spare hangers.
I filled the bottom half of each one with sand to give it some ballast so they don’t fall over.
Another simpler project was adding wheels to a lot of the furniture used in the backroom space so its all easier to move about as needed.
One thing my daughter really wanted were these dressing rooms, which were constructed out of some black iron pipe. They make “fancy” decorative pipes, but it was cheaper, and probably sturdier, to just buy some actual pipes. The main issue there was the coating on actual pipes is very gross and dirty and comes off easily, something you don’t want in a clothing store, so we sealed the popes before installing them.
Just for comparison, the first dressing room photo here, is the same corner where I am sanding in the above image.
Probably the most complex project was the store’s sign. We will probably upgrade eventually to something mounted on the building, but for now I have built this nice stand up sign. They originally were looking at A frame signs but the wind is a big problem with those falling over. Then we looked at some swinging signs and decided those would work much better because the sign itself will swing instead of folding up and falling over.
We also decided the pre built models online were kind of cheap, and I have the tools and ability to build things, so we just bought the wood to build a sign. Its also much heavier this was to make it more resistant to the wind as well.
I am not sure I have ever really talked about their businesses yet. It is “two businesses”. My daughter runs the Vintage clothing stuff on Lady Lettie Bug which means items of a particular style and type. My wife has R&T Thrift, which is a bit more general resale.
Most of the items come from estate sales. They will often go early to find things they want for sure, this is more often where the nicer higher value items come from. They also have made friends with several of the people who run these sales and will do a buy out of the leftover clothing after the sales. This helps them find more “hidden gem” sort of items for cheap, and helps the estate sellers clean out the homes.
Not everything from the buyouts is useful though, and a lot of the work is sorting through it all. The amounts can range anywhere from a single closet to an entire minivan full of clothes.
It gets sorted and separated into several categories.
Some of it is just gross or ruined and goes into the garbage.
Some of it is just damaged but could be cut up into rags
Some of it is just slightly damaged or discolored but otherwise usable, most of these items are either donated or put out at the curb for free.
Some of it is decent but doesn’t meet a value threshold for online, these often go into totes for a later garage sale. Pretty much everything above this line also gets laundered and cleaned unless it still has tags and is clean.
Some items are nice and have been found to have sold online, so they get put aside to be listed.
If it is a certain style or type, anything from the last category goes to my daughter as vintage instead of thrift.
One big benefit of the shop space is that it has hookups for a washer and dryer, though we don’t have a set there yet. We do a LOT of laundry and have gone through several washers over the last few years. This isn’t helped though by the washer space at the house being small so we basically can only really use smaller, cheaper, washers.
Anyway, its been a fun new adventure. There are social accounts and weblinks for everything over on the landing page for the business if you are interested in vintage clothing items.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
Something I feel like I take for granted a bit is just how good my state handles everything election wise. And it’s politics in general, for the most part. I mean, like everywhere it’s full of nuts in the rural areas, but overall, it’s traditionally just been a “safe” state.
One thing that I love that is newer is vote by mail. This started back in 2020 because of COVID of course. I mean, maybe it was an option before, but it was made extremely easy in the 2020 election. Previously, like many others, I would go down to my local polling place, often at like 6:30 in the morning before there was a line and before work, fill out a sheet, stick it in a machine, and vote. I tried to vote every year, at least in November, but not always in things like Primaries.
One option when they started the initial vote-by-mail push, was basically, “sign me up for every future election”.
And this has been sooooo nice. I get ballots for every election, even off-year and off-month elections. I have no excuse not to vote at all now, the only real previous excuse being, “I didn’t know there even was an election.” Which feels like an excuse often counted on by some folks with unpopular asshole-type views on issues. It’s less of a problem for my state because we run things properly and fairly. But occasionally I see news stories about some sort of shitty law that pushes some conspiracy tier referendum or whatever but it’s on the odd year early April election that like 4 people normally show up for, instead of on the ballot during a year divisible by 4 (Presidential elections), when many many people vote and can weigh in on the idea.
That’s just one reason to push ballots out to every eligible voter.
And they really should just go out to every eligible voter. Because so many people don’t vote, and they really should. I can only imagine part of the reason is the inconvenience of actually going and doing it. Or maybe people are simply unable due to disability or other health reasons. They don’t know that these options are available, so just, provide it for them automatically.
Another likely hang-up is the whole “I don’t know who to vote for” problem. I already know who I am (and am not) voting for, so I sent my ballot back the day after I received it. I didn’t have to though, I could have held on to it and spent over a month researching every name on the ballot to make sure I vote for the right people.
I did do this as well. Ballots often have a lot fo local offices, and very often have these “Should this judge remain in office” questions. How many people can even name one judge, let alone know if they are a decent judge or a decent person. With the at-home mail-in voting, I could easily look up every judge on the ballot and decide if I thought they should keep their job or not. I had one candidate that is a piece of shit Nazi quoter and should not be in office at all, but they are running unopposed, so I went looking for possible write-in candidates for that office.
It also takes all of the time pressure off. I’m not awake at 6:30am standing in a little booth in a room full of strangers trying to fill out the sheet so I can go back home and finish getting ready for work. I have all day, all week, all month. It’s even better than making election day a National Holiday, which some have suggested. It already really should be a week-long affair, but why not just make it simple and last a month with mail-in ballots.
Of course, there are a myriad of reasons why this isn’t happening everywhere. You can’t have a media spectacle horse race if it isn’t all focused on a single day. Another major factor is that if everyone actually voted, there are some parties in this country that would never win elections at all without pulling up from their myriad of incredibly shitty stances on various issues. There is probably some potential for more actual voter fraud, if you send ballots to every eligible voter, how do you know that particular voter filled them out and not their abusive spouse or parent? How do you know they aren’t a mostly comatose 99-year-old and their kid used their ballot? That sort of thing.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
A few things to note here, and some thoughts on it in general. He was doing this for a while, since 2017 according to the article, so it wasn’t like he made it in a month. Apparently, he was a music maker, he just wasn’t getting anywhere with his produced music. As he has been doing it since 2017, this predates even ChatGPT by about 5 years. He was not using the current crop of “AI” tools. My guess, he was just using a script of some kind to compile together loop tracks to mass-produce generic EDM music. Because AI is the current buzzword, this automation is being called AI by news outlets.
In the end though, the automation part is not the illegal part, it’s the scamming using bots that is the illegal part, as morally justified as it may be. Spotify is extremely popular, but Spotify doesn’t make artists any money. For example, Snoop Dogg, one of the most popular rap musicians ever, made about $45,000 for a billion plays. And a billion plays is a LOT. My favorite artist Aurora, has just under a billion plays on her most popular track, Runaway. The next most popular of her tracks is almost half that and third place is about 150 million plays.
Snoop Dogg has a LOT of plays.
The point is, that Spotify isn’t exactly the patron saint of supporting artists, and so the fraudster in the story above may be a bit morally justified in his efforts. That’s part of why I prefer to buy music, digitally, on CDs, on Vinyl. A larger chunk goes to the artist that way, especially on Bandcamp Fridays or buying direct from the band’s website, or even direct from the band at a show.
Anyway, I am not here to try to defend the guy in the original article above, just to talk a bit about AI and the Internet. I seriously doubt he is the only one doing this. He is just the first to get caught. Or at least the first high-profile one. Especially with current tools of AI, making it easier than ever to mass-produce garbage. Heck, I am pretty sure record labels themselves use software to pump up numbers on certain artists, less for the Spotify money, but for marketing.
But this also likely pushes into other areas too. It would be easy to do similar tricks on YouTube with bots, or Kindle Unlimited, just bots turning pages in free, AI-created eBooks.
A long while ago, probably a decade now, I came across a post on 4chan’s /g/ board (/g/ = Technology) with a guide on how to set up a Blogspot blog using scraping tools, add it to a ring of other Blogspot blogs, then automated a script that would click through the blogs gathering AdSense money from Google, to the benefit of anyone involved. I am pretty sure this was a regular post too, to keep new people coming in.
It’s the same principle as the automated Spotify system above. Hell, it may even be the brainchild of the same folks.
The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to intentionally manipulate the population and minimize organic human activity.
Which is probably less about “manipulating the population” and more just about extracting wealth through automated systems. Like the top level morally gray hero, it’s all a sort of, not necessarily evil activity. It’s very “Digital Robin Hood” in a way. Except instead of directly taking from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood is out making posts on 4chan on how to create automated blog systems. I mean, Google has replaced all of its systems for support and everything with bots, why shouldn’t the users replace themselves with bots as well? It’s bots all the way down!
Bots are trivially easy to build as well. One of the lessons in my 100 Days of Python class was making a bit that would play a cookie clicker game in a maximum my efficient way.
Even without using software it gets done in manual ways in the real world sometimes, for marketing purposes. It’s all just manipulating the algorithm for money. I guess in the end the trick is to do it in a way that it doesn’t harm the “wrong people”. Sometimes I feel like I could be rich if I weren’t so honest because a lot of this isn’t that hard to do.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
Ramen Junkie 
