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I’m a big fan of Old Time Radio (OTR) and hard boiled detective shows.  If you want to hear all sorts of Noir type crime shows on Internet Radio, I suggest Audio Noir.  There you will hear mysteries, hard boiled, police proceedurals and more.

But the recordings of Old Time Radio make great podcasts and most are available at Archive.org.  Below is a list of some of the hard boiled detective shows I have enjoyed.  Philip Marlow and Sam Spade are the best of the genre.  There are others but these will get you started.🎙🎙

On some of these you have to download zip bundles of mp3 files.  So load up your iPod and enjoy.

 

Adventures of Philip Marlow. The Gerold Mohr episodes (most of them) are the best. The Mohr episodes define the genre on radio.

The Adventures of Sam Spade. Really good. Lighter than Marlow these are still amongst the best.

Broadway is My Beat.  The Larry Thor episodes are best.  Some of the characters are just weird but over time I grew to really like this show.

Richard Diamond, Private Detective.  Starring Dick Powell.

Let George Do It.  First few episodes are sadly played for laughs, but later episodes are hard boiled.

Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator.  Pretty standard.

Your’s Truly, Johnny Dollar.  I’ve singled out the Edmund O’Brian episodes which I think are the best and most hard boiled of this long running series.

Jeff Regan.  The 24 shows starring Jack Webb are the best.

Pat Novak, For Hire. Another Jack Webb show.

 

 

 

 

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I used to collect browsers way back when, I don’t anymore although I do check out different browsers on occasion.  This conversation started me thinking about why I don’t care much about browsers anymore.

  1. Back in the early oughts there was a race to add features to the browsers. Each browser had a different feature set, UI and different resulting workflow.  It was fun to test them and see how they fit in with my routine.
  2. There were more rendering engines which made switching between browsers and adventure.
  3. Everyone was on dialup. Speed really mattered. Today, not so much.
  4. Security.  One reason I used Opera was because it was a little more secure against exploits having an oddball rendering engine.  It also didn’t auto download things from websites the way IE did.

Somewhere along the line, minimalism became the mantra for browsers.  All the neat stuff so lovingly added to browsers in the early years started getting stripped out.  It sort of made all browsers the same. Yawn.

We defeated the IE mono-culture for awhile to slowly have it replaced by the new Chrome mono-culture while Firefox seemed to drift for awhile. Apple developed Safari, but then quit the Windows field.  Many of the smaller Open Source browsers never quite seemed to ever be finished.  Opera got sold and the new owners ripped the guts out of it to make it minimalist.

In the end, almost all browsers seemed to be alike claiming to be: fast, clean, minimalist but maybe extendable, tabbed, and boring.  And if you use Chrome, also loaded with Google spyware which you probably can’t shut off even if they provide you with an alleged switch buried deeply in the UI.

Mainly I use one browser on each device, with a second as a rarely used backup/second opinion.  The days of having 4 or 5 browsers are for me pretty much over.


33°F

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I was heartened to see The Correspondent has made their starter goal.  I donated a coouple of weeks ago only because I’d get my money back if they didn’t raise enough to start.  To my surprise, they did.  It’s still a win-win for me.  I’m hoping I’ll like the Correspondent’s brand of corporate free journalism.  Now they have a few month’s to put together a news and editorial team before launching in mid-2019.  Good luck.

Source: The Correspondent – Unbreaking news

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As I got to the sidewalk a black limo glided up and a couple of educator types got out, armed with rulers, grabbed me by the arms and hustled me to the back of the car.  “McVerry, wants to show you something,” said one, with a pencil stored over her ear while the other one shoved a hood over my head. “The hood is for your own protection so you can’t reveal our destination to any of them later.

All I can say, is we ended up at one of Greg McVerry‘s many super secret bases, heavily guarded by librarians and dusty library cats. I was in the Area 51 of Greg’s cyberworld getting a behind the scenes look at a secret Known install.

And you know, Known is really nice.  The script is really cool and easy to use.  Understandably, I only got to see it from a posters POV and not an admin’s but what I saw was slick and clean UI.  And it does Indieweb right out of the box – also cool.  I understand there are plugins to add more features to Known but I didn’t get a chance to see those.  I like the wizard sort of feature that prompts you to add all your social networks and other websites upon signup – that takes care of your h-card at the same time, I assume.

Some things Known is missing:

  1. Templates: I always like a sidebar and as far as I can tell Known does not have this.
  2. Import: I’m told there is no Import feature currently.  That makes it hard to migrate in from an existing WP blog.  There is an Export function, which is good.
  3. No automatic updates: I suspect this will come after Known hits 1.0 release but I’m just guessing.

But despite that, Known is a pretty polished script for a project that is not even at 1.0 release.  It’s simple to use and attractive.  I think if you are starting a new blog, Known is a good place to start if you can sort the installation and update hurdles.

 

Many thanks to Greg McVerry for the tour.

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After chaos, the EU’s plan to censor the internet takes a huge step backwards

Source: After chaos, the EU’s plan to censor the internet takes a huge step backwards / Boing Boing

I don’t know the details, but I’m not bound by EU rules, I will link to whoever I want to.

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Leaving Apple & Google: next /e/ release and what features are in the pipe We’re working on stabilizing the current /e/ beta so that we can release a V1.0 on early 2019. It will include an /e/ application repository that will let users install most Android applications, in two clicks.

Like: Leaving Apple & Google: next /e/ release and what features are in the pipe – /e/

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All this WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg stuff got me thinking.  With WordPress it seems like the Indieweb starts making serious and cool progress and the WordPress people come along and knock the game board and pieces off the table.  And it sounds like the disruption from WordPress is going to continue for a couple of years.

Why not take a page out of Apple’s playbook and take control higher up in the food chain? Why not come out with an Indieweb compatible blog engine of our own?  Either fork an existing open source project or build new?  This does not mean you have to make it exclusive but make it the way the Indieweb wants the Indieweb elven magic to function.  Also put in the standard blogging features most people expect.  Why keep trying to adapt the Indieweb stuff to blog or CMS platforms that are at best indifferent, never designed for or just that don’t want to play ball?

This isn’t a slam on the coders who are working so hard to make everything work on WordPress, I’m just asking if maybe it’s not time to find better terrain to fight from.

If the Indieweb really wants widespread adoption they need to come out with a turnkey solution.  It would act as a solution for many and a proof of concept for others to emulate. Something that can be put in hosting C-panels for one touch install. Something that just works, is easy to move to and move away from. Something supported, active, growing with enough polish that it inspires confidence in the user.

I’d really like to hear serious discussion on this.

Also on:

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On the term “Content”:

 

STOP using THEIR words to describe OUR work. OUR soul. OUR belief. OUReffort.

START using OUR words to describe OUR work. OUR soul. OUR belief. OUReffort.

Like: Owning Your Content – Words

Agreed.  John can bang words together pretty good. Read his essay on the term “content” at the link above.

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