Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Apache Cordova API Cookbook Site Retired
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- Category: Mobile Development Mobile Development
- Published: 09 February 2022 09 February 2022
I shutdown the web site for my Apache Cordova API Cookbook book today. The book came out in 2014, and Apache Cordova has evolved a lot since then. Many of the source code examples in the book may still be valuable to new Cordova developers, but I’ve not validated any of the code against current Cordova versions in many years.
You can still buy the book on Amazon and other places, but there’s no longer the need for a promotional website for the publication. Don’t worry, the code from the book is still up on GitHub
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Apache Cordova 4 Programming Site Retired
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- Category: Mobile Development Mobile Development
- Published: 09 February 2022 09 February 2022
I shutdown the web site for my Apache Cordova 4 Programming book today. The book published way back in 2015, and Apache Cordova has evolved a lot since then.
You can still buy the book on Amazon and other places, but there’s no longer the need for a promotional website for the publication. Don’t worry, the code from the book is still up on GitHub.
Accurately Calculating Progress in Goodreads
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- Category: Miscellaneous Miscellaneous
- Published: 09 January 2022 09 January 2022
I love writing utility applications; for many, many years I worked in the Enterprise space doing technology transitions and one of my favorite things was to write little pieces of code to solve problems big and small. For this blog post, the problem I’m dealing with is for a free app from Amazon called Goodreads.
For years, Amazon had two social apps that allowed people to track the books they read: Shelfari and Goodreads. They eventually shut down Shelfari and merged everyone’s data into Goodreads. That saddened me because Shelfari was a much better app than Goodreads and delivered a more consistent experience across platforms. Goodreads delivers a different user experience (UX) on different platforms (browser, native mobile apps) and I really kinda hate it. I’ve gotten used to the android app user experience, but when I sometimes have to use a browser instead, I’m completely lost in completing some tasks.
I use Goodreads because it lets me track how many books I read in a year (last year I read 68 books out of my goal of reading 50). It also allows me to see the books family and friends are reading, so it gives me great suggestions on what to pick up next. When I’m reading a book, Goodreads allows me to publish an update showing friends what I’m reading and how far into the book I am. The problem is that for many books, the information Goodreads uses to calculate percentage completion based on page number is inaccurate, making the progress value inaccurate as well.
Looking at the Blues Wireless Platform
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- Category: Internet of Things (IoT) Internet of Things (IoT)
- Published: 10 October 2021 10 October 2021
I love working with microcontrollers; I got started early with the Arduino and Particle Platforms as well as Raspberry Pi (yes, I know, the Pi is not a microcontroller) and many others. I built a few projects on the Particle platform, but I never really got into the Internet of Things (IoT) space. Me hacking around with microcontrollers and single-board computers isn’t necessarily the IoT space.
I recently learned about Ray Ozzie’s latest project: Blues Wireless (https://www.geekwire.com/2021/ray-ozzies-telecom-startup-blues-wireless-raises-22m-bill-gates-others/) and quickly ordered some hardware and got to work learning how to use it. IoT platforms are usually either a software only solution (running in the cloud) or a combined hardware and software solution. Blues Wireless is the latter. The purpose of this article is to give you my take on the platform, and I’ll likely publish additional articles here or elsewhere showing you how to use it for different types of projects.
Notecard and Notecarrier
Blues’ primary hardware product is the Notecard, a tiny wireless device with a processor, some sensors, and an interface that allows other hardware devices to use it to send and receive data to and from the cloud.
Note: Image ‘borrowed’ from the Blues Wireless web site at https://blues.io.
Andy Doro Word Clock Update
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- Category: Internet of Things (IoT) Internet of Things (IoT)
- Published: 10 August 2021 10 August 2021
When I first discovered Andy Doro’s Word Clock project, I immediately fell in love with it and knew I had to build one. I quickly downloaded everything I needed, then ordered the enclosure pieces from Ponoko.
The clock ran in our guest bathroom for more than a year before I noticed that the time was off. Looking into things, I realized that the temperature change in the bathroom (my son takes loooooong, hot showers) and the temperature sensitivity of the real-time clock (RTC) caused the time to shift.
I started looking for ways to improve this project so the time would stay accurate, so I decided to fork the project and rebuild it using a Wi-Fi enabled Adafruit Feather board and Network Time Protocol (NTP) to allow the project to periodically reset the local RTC to the correct time over the Internet. I also selected an RTC FeatherWing (add-on board for the Feather) that doesn’t have the temperature sensitivity of the earlier project.
The Feather board has a different footprint than the Adafruit Trinket board originally used for the project, so I engaged Muzammil Patel on Fiverr to update the enclosure drawings to accommodate the microcontroller change. I also learned that even though Adafruit published a specification for the Feather platform, the Espressif-based Feather boards have a slightly different footprint which made accurately updating the enclosure a challenge.
I completed the updated project assembly last night and published the forked repository this morning on GitHub.
With that work done, I’ve started working on a wall mounted version of the clock. I have the hardware and software all working, now I have to just start assembling the clock. I’ll publish the results as soon as I’m done.