Follow up on the last.

Sony has fallen at every DRM hurdle and famously locked down their network and minidisc players with proprietary software (SonicStage) and formats (atrac). Thankfully, a open source project called jsymphonic is available to get music on and off of this old walkman. I love that there are people out there still working on making old abandoned, but perfectly serviceable hardware accessible. I must admit some of the documentation could use some help. Specifically I had to generate a key file for my walkman. This is surprisingly easy.

• install the MP3 FileManager Application from SONY on any compatible PC ( i was able to run it on a windows 10 VM).
• once installed navigate to the install location “C:\Program Files\Sony\MP3 File Manager” (or \Program Files (x86)\ if ruining in 64 bit and run the CopyTool.exe as an admin. This will place a new folder on your player titled MP3FM. The DviD.dat file may need to be moved from there to the root for Jsymphonic to recognize it.
  
  

I have been listening to this thing for a few days and there is a lovely feeling of nostalgia as well and something purposeful about plugging in and turning off other distractions. I went through a half day of work just letting tunes play into my head without pings, boops, and accidental ads distract me every few mins.

Get out there use old tech and enjoy yourself!

I found this forum post helpful.

I have been skirting around the edges of BlueSky trying to crystallize my thoughts and why I won’t be signing up. Along comes Christine Lemmer-Webber @cwebber@social.coop and writes a really in depth post that does that and so much more. I’ve provided some call outs that really reinforce my thinking, but I highly recommend you go read the original in full. (it is a long, and technically concept heavy, read but worth the effort if you are interested in how this stuff works.)

How decentralized is Bluesky really?

“Message passing” vs “shared heap” architectures:

If this sounds infeasible to do in our metaphorical domestic environment, that’s because it is. A world of full self-hosting is not possible with Bluesky. In fact, it is worse than the storage requirements, because the message delivery requirements become quadratic at the scale of full decentralization: to send a message to one user is to send a message to all. Rather than writing one letter, a copy of that letter must be made and delivered to every person on earth.

Direct messages are completely centralized:

The answer, if you guessed it, is centralization. All direct messages, no matter what your Personal Data Store is, no matter what your relay is, go through Bluesky, the company.

Bluesky is centralized, but “credible exit” is a worthy pursuit:

Even though the majority of Bluesky services are currently operated by a single company, we nevertheless consider the system to be decentralized because it provides credible exit: if Bluesky Social PBC goes out of business or loses users’ trust, other providers can step in to provide an equivalent service using the same dataset and the same protocols. – Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable Decentralized Social Media

Of course there was a cordial [response](https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t) and a cordial [re - response](https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/#f) by Chirstine to that. I haven't gotten enough time to read them both through as of yet.

I use Joplin a lot for my day gig and for creative stuff. For the day gig I created a template and a shortcut to run every day when I log on to capture my notes for the day. If you like OneNote, Evernote, Obsidian et al Give it a peek.

---
template_title: {{#custom_datetime}}dddd MMM DD  YYYY{{/custom_datetime}} 

---

{{ template_title }}

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# Check Email


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# Leftover from Yesterday


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# Check outstanding tickets


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# Today's Fun

## Meetings:

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# Long Term Projects