Ending the day with some work, at least… this morning was not necessary.
-
Lonely
Another few days of mostly harassment, stalking, and manipulation. Another lonely Saturday night, like usual. The standard NLP bullshit, if not some negative crap, just ‘nap’. But the same sexual testing, nonetheless. This is the epitome of institutional abuse, but I’m being singled out, too. Weeded out. Nobody cares about me.
-
Chronic Isolation
Someday I will meet a woman who loves me and wants me enough to talk to me and make plans. Then, I would take her to the places where I grew up to hike the trails where I played as a kid, or explore the desert on a road trip, or take a holiday out of the country. These are the things that I fantasize about, simple things like getting a hug or having someone to wake up next to on Christmas. These are the things I’ve been deprived of… being stalked is not the same as being loved.
-
A Hundred Thousand Hundred Thousands
Equals 10 Billion : 10,000,000,000
-
Status 07/08/24
skysurfer.media
So much to do. But things are better since I gave up deadlines for goals. They’re easier to keep. So much for launching this site in June… but things are happening, all the same. Still using WordPress but it’s really bloated and it has it’s own set of security issues despite being difficult to embed iframes and such. I know, plugins – still, really clunky and I don’t need most of what it offers. Even dealing with fonts is frustrating. But, I imported a ton of old journal entries and I’ve documented the whole legal fiasco here (which I will finalize soon)… so, for now I’m keeping this blog. However, some changes are in the works. First, this front page will be a live feed sort of like X (Twitter) but self hosted like everything else here. The format is moving to more of a micro blog without the need for Subject, Comments, Categories, etc… there is no user registration here, only public posts and drafts – keeping it simple for many reasons, not the least of which is that most people are using their phones to get new content. I am considering a few options, but media itself is handled by different parts of this site. Aside from a few static pages and the archives, all that’s really needed is a multimedia notification stream with browser support.
mail.skysurfer.media
Email is fully functional here, though I’m only using indigo@skysurfer.media for the time being… and I only get WordPress spam, so the Contact page will disappear soon, too. Live chat is way better, anyway. Still some fix needed to make Gmail cooperate, but no problems with the local system. This site will never use mailing lists or send out bulk email, and since there are no other users here, it’s not likely to get much use. But, all the usual addresses are available and aliased like a good server should have.
webmail.skysurfer.media
Roundcube rocks. I don’t know why I ever used anyone else’s webmail (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.). Installation and setup was almost as advanced as the mail server itself to get it working securely, but the only thing left to do now is to fix the icons. There are only personal accounts at this time, but the potential to offer users an email address is there (if there are ever other users).
admin.skysurfer.media
No public access. Cockpit reverse proxy. I still use SSH for just about everything, but this makes many tasks very easy – especially on the road. No more mosh, but tmux still has its place. Add the dashboards for Linode and Cloudflare, and every part of this site can be administered with a web browser, even on Android.
mx-admin.skysurfer.media
No public access. PostfixAdmin – invaluable for configuring aliases and mailboxes. The standard addresses are functional – webmaster, postmaster, etc… but I do need to map out a list and make sure all mail gets to a box that gets checked. And also, instead of a catchall address, multiple aliases need to be set up for specific purposes. No rush.
images.skysurfer.media
Public access, should automatically direct to https://images.skysurfer.media/user/indigo — this is the Public folder for LibrePhotos and the pool of images for use elsewhere on the site. Currently, there are 4,300 photos and more to come in the next few days. This is the culmination of rough editing of the 26,000 originals. I don’t think anyone will look through all of the images, but this finally makes things chronological instead of using folders by topic, and that means new photos won’t get lost in large collections (i.e. sunsets, flowers, dragonflies). This is not a final presentation of images and most would need post processing. The addition of slideshows and virtual albums to the site is planned. This is what’s on the sorting table. There are also currently many personal or documentary images mixed in…
photos.skysurfer.media
No public access. For the moment, this runs PhotoPrism and there is no public option. *sigh* I wish it was all it claims to be… the AI is useless, which was the main reason to install it. And there’s no way to delete images. Pros and cons compared to LibrePhotos, but for the time being it’s still the superior engine for importing new photos and it generates a ton of thumbnails. Plus, its installed bare metal and it’s very fast. Hopefully, future updates will improve it’s functionality. This may be renamed px-admin in the future or removed altogether. The original idea was to use photos for final presentation and images for sorting and editing. First things first. Still trying to get the dates right and the duplicates removed… then video…
live.skysurfer.media
This is a companion address to the Skylight powered by OwnCast. In the future it may be used to serve content, but for now it’s just a heavily encrypted input stream that acts like a mixer for adding live content. See below.
skylight.skysurfer.media
Welcome to the Skylight! This section of the site is intended to be relatively separate from the main skysurfer.media – whereas the main site may have some dynamic content, it’s meant to deliver static pages with more traditional-style links and a site map, and all content is mine. The Skylight is meant to be live. Originally intended to be an outlet for sharing live drone footage, the vision grew to encompass all kinds of live streaming – jam sessions, live video from the jeep, even scheduled content. Then, with the thought of adding overlays with ffmpeg and using prerecorded sources on a playlist, the live RTMP input could become preemptive – and voila!, an internet TV station is born. But the Skylight is not being designed to be broadcast to a larger audience. It’s just a personal stream for myself, friends, and people I meet along the way. So, don’t expect it to report the weather in your city unless you’re in my city. Now that the images have all been migrated to the cloud and the new system is chronological, it will be relatively easy to manage heuristic slideshows and video editing. Plus, using systemd timers it’s my plan to introduce scheduled content such as the local news hour and radio shows I like. Then, the whole stream can be saved for a few days to be replayed on demand – say I slept in but I enjoy the 6am DJ, or I had to work but there’s that hip hop show that’s only on Wednesdays, or the reggae hour on Friday – the Skylight is the source for what’s playing, or grab recent content like a DVR. One reason Skylight Productions is separate from skysurfer.media is because not all the content will be mine and some may be auto generated. The playlist and sources will be listed. There is also chat functionality built in but I’m considering Jitsi Meet, instead, if I include chat at all… not sure how I’ll handle incoming messages, yet. SMS? Visitors will not be expected to sign up for an account or download an app…
There is so much to do… stay tuned… skysurfer.media is almost live.
—— Indigo
Updated: July 17th, 2024
-
4th of July
So, it’s the 4th of July and the beginning of a week long heat wave with temps reaching over 100F. My plans are on track but very far behind – a month behind on plans that were a year behind to begin with. As a result, and due to overall logistics, my approach to time itself has changed. This is partly from dealing with so much death and continued social adversities, but it’s also pragmatic since it’s easier to keep goals than deadlines. What celebration there may have been tonight is clearly postponed, but there will be plenty of Summer for BBQs and music, for floating the river, and maybe I’ll even get a lover – and I will let freedom ring, regardless. Fireworks downtown tonight, not really hungry but definitely a sense of craving. I’ll be the detached observer again. And this week I’ll work on updating this site while I hide from the heat. There is progress – 26K images have been uploaded to the cloud, sorted by PhotoPrism and almost imported for sorting to LibrePhotos… these operations take days at a time, but it’s worth it to have the structure in place for future workflow. Behind the scenes changes to administration and networking are complete, and the site is almost ready to start streaming. Some details to work out – fix email auth for google, set timers for owncast playlist, overlays, etc. Still to do, whisper integration. The legal cases are over – I will write about that, add a Jeep page, and change the front page to more of a live status page soon. Time, time, time… Happy 4th of July!
-
Phase 2
Finally, 25,981 images uploaded to the cloud – indexing should be completed tomorrow or the next day. Then, one mass search for images to remove and I’ll start putting the best back out to the public… thinking about using pigallery and maybe even removing wordpress – all public images are going into a random pool and then getting tags. So, Phase 2 is still mostly behind the scenes, but a picture of the day will emerge. As for my goal of having this project operational by June? July looks better, but it’s always going to be a work in progress. Solar and awning just got installed on the Jeep – page still needs to be made – next is the stereo, then cameras, then drones… might have to rebuild the engine soon, too… it does look like I’ll be in Corvallis all Summer but back to taking pictures and producing. Work, work, pay, work and play… then, Phase 3. 😊
-
Slow progress
18,000 photos transferred
8,000 still to go
~ 7 or 8 hours left
…and the server is cranking away at postprocessing.
So far, it appears there are some duplicates and video files will need manual intervention. Also, auto tagging is worthless – I might make a post about this, the failing of “AI” – apparently, the algorithms depend on ‘normal’ subject matter… so, a sea anemone gets tagged as a bagel (which it does sort of look like), a newly hatched sapsucker appears to be a beetle to the computer, wild turkeys are marked as turtles, and a picture of an elk shows up as ‘Hartebeest’ which is a word I will not likely search for… I suspect facial recognition will be just as bad, though I don’t have too many pictures of people… Sadly, these are the strengths of photoprism and I’m not sure it’s even handling raw files appropriately. What I’ll be left with is a well organized collection by date, and 11 thumbnails of different sizes for every image – and that’s about it. There are also limitations to the number of files and the maximum size which won’t work… and it’s been indexing files for days! I don’t know if it will finish before the end of this month.
I might go back to zenphoto before this is all over, but pigallery as a companion and using comments in metadata is most likely.
Site update soon.
-
Fishing in Mexico
Just a line and a hook is all one needs to go fishing in Mexico. A small stone may be used as a weight, a broken stick for a float, and anchovies found on the shore for bait… little fish are used to catch bigger fish and with just a line and a hook, fishermen go to the bay to catch dinner in the evening.
-
Progress
So far behind… I haven’t taken very many pictures since my friend passed away, and it’s been an emotional but healing trip through time organizing a master copy for the new system. Everything is getting uploaded to the cloud – 26,000 images after removing duplicates, but including a lot of pictures that didn’t turn out. The difference between an amateur and a professional is editing, someone once told me, and these days that includes tagging and postprocessing. This is usually done on one’s home computer, even if the storage is online. But in my case, I’m turning to artificial intelligence and a private server to sort through so many files. The rationale is that I will have a system in place where I can upload images from any number of different sources, from any number of different locations, and have the work preserved while being easy to sort, edit, and share. And, instead of a site attempting to show only the final product, the idea is to have raw feeds online that can be sourced for any number of media projects. This will include the streams, audio/video, atom, etc… preserved for a time, searchable and on demand replays. The photography section of the site hasn’t been built yet, but the steaming section is almost ready – skylight.skysurfer.media – and that’s next. First, to finish uploading the rest of ~400GB… 20,000 images to go.
-
Passings
More cloak and dagger bullshit… today, after dropping off an order on 2nd, I drove past Bodhi on the way to my next delivery. Definitely unwelcome, though yesterday seemed different. Nothing has changed about my driving routines, except that I don’t go to the guitar shop and I buy coffee elsewhere. But even a note like this about gracing the place with my aura gets a sort of distorted echo response. This time it was people shielding their face, like I’m not looking at you out of the corner of my eye, lol. It’s just more cryptic messages and harassment, still nobody talks to me about what’s going on. It’s been this way for years and years. Today a woman blocked my exit at Buffalo Wild Wings and when I squeezed by behind her, I could swear a picture was snapped, like we were posing – and add to that the strange echo online about a heart attack… and add to that Randy’s drums – What?!? Is there anybody… out there? The day started at the river, with strung out addicts incapable of enjoying the day, way too much desperation, and curious to know what happened with the evil angel hostage situation last night, and if it involved Pete. And the highlight of my day was seeing Emily, even though it’s always in passing. Such good energy, and much needed touch. Now today ends as it began, sorting photos from the past, alone and available. More sleep ahead, full of dreams, and then tomorrow again, back to the land of sex and money, where reality is much stranger than fantasy.
-
Farmers Market
It was the first one this year for me, and the weather couldn’t be better for a farmers market. Sadly, there are no strawberries yet, which goes along with the water being too cold still to float the river, but a good walk all the same. Way too many people, nobody I knew… I avoided walking past Bodhi on 2nd, though I graced it with my aura 😉 and I saw that there are only ropes around the place, not a privacy wall… this begins my work day, and it’s already getting hot. I’m available, but I don’t think anyone knows me or wants me. And still, I’m looking forward to a good day… the rest of the season will be even better.