Inside View

Family Day Out At Foynes Air Show

WE ENJOYED THE Foynes Air Show along with 13,000 other people, especially the raw sound of propeller-powered acrobatic aircraft. But I missed the feel of prop wash and the smell of aviation fuel.

Listen to "Foynes Airshow" on Spreaker.

Revisiting @danyork's "Create Something New" Rule

Dan York writes:

I woke up this morning frustrated that I simply haven’t been writing across my various sites. In theory I am a “writer”, but I haven’t been writing! And as I wrote in My 3 Words for 2018: “because if I don't write... the stories build up inside of me until they want to explode like a pressure cooker without a relief valve. Writing is my relief valve. I need to do it.”

So I said to myself- I know, I will impose a new rule on myself... no social media usage until I publish something new! A blog post, a podcast episode (such as my The Dan York Report short audio segments), an article on some site (ex CircleID), a longer update on a social site... something.... anything.... BEFORE I get sucked into the vortex of social media updates.

And I will start with a blog post like this one...

 

Calling Phones with Alexa is Child's Play

WITHOUT ANY ASSISTANCE (and without being prompted), Dylan (7) just called my mobile phone in Ireland by asking our Amazon Echo Dot in the kitchen. I didn't think Irish phone numbers were configured for that service.

But after a little cross-check, I realised the voice call was simply a five star VOIP service tucked inside my handset's Amazon Alexa app. This means anyone with an Amazon Echo device who has me in their contact list can ring my mobile phone. I'm fascinated by the quality of the call and the natural language that makes all of this so simple.

Underway in Ireland with Modules h/t @timkirbyreal #OER

8fdd

I HAVE SPENT three years listening in the wings as some of my lifelong friends politely talked about how they were making, creating, and sharing open source Drupal services. On the 23rd of July 2018, I jumped into the deep end and created Underway in Ireland, powered by Drupal 7. I'm deeply appreciative of Ruth Maher, Tim Kirby, and Jochen Lillich for offering a well-lighted pathway during my journey back into MySQL, PHP, Javascript, and content development.

Answering 100 Call-ins

I HAVE 100 unanswered call-ins to my Anchor.fm/topgold podcast and I've decided I will try to carve through those calls by publishing them three or four at a time. That means you could expect to hear my mailbag for the month of July as I pare back the backlog. You can follow this Mailbag Project by subscribing to my Spreaker Topgold Audio Newsfeed.

I imagine I could be as diligent about unanswered emails too but with more than 250,000 unopened emails, I think it's a simpler task of merely select-all and delete. So I might just do that. Fortunately, my blog doesn't ring me anymore--that stopped around two years ago.