Oort Blog

Personal Media Diary, 22 August, 2022

How do we interact with media, as individual media consumers? If our individual media usage behaviors may be a topic of study for digital marketing services, but do we ever review our own complete media diet?

I’ve created a diary of my own personal media usage for the day of Monday, August 22, 2022.

Overview

I’ve published this media diary for the day, in a format of an annotated timeline. At each duration, I’ve tried to characterize my media usage for that period within one or more general categories. For the “Web” category, I’ve narrowed the category into a short number of sub-categories, e.g Web/Technical, Web/Commercial Services, and Web/Social Media.

At the start of the day, my own media usage was directed mostly about technical concerns, after a weekend’s effort in creating and troubleshooting the Web site for Thinkum.Space. 

In a personal sense, it was also a day of some light-duty motor vehicle maintenance, after a few months of my Kawasaki KLR650 motorcycle collecting dust. As a new motorcycle operator, I was able to end the day with a review about slow-speed motorcycle handling practices explained by Robert Simmons, at his YouTube channel, Be The Boss Of Your Motorcycle!

Academically, this Monday begins the first week of my attending courses in a Digital Media Literacy program, as an online student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.* Notwithstanding my own momentary struggles with a WordPress server configuration, I believe it’s a timely and relevant field of academic study.

Timeline/Diary

8:00 AM (Music, Evernote)

  • Headphones (Music)
  • Beginning the day’s Media Diary (Evernote)

I began the day’s music listening with a playlist on my Android tablet, while starting my Media Diary for the day, using a private note in Evernote

8:20 – 8:25 AM (Software)

  • Software updates (Software)

I had installed Microsoft Office 2007 over the weekend, using a Windows 10 installation in VirtualBox, under a FreeBSD installation on my laptop. The next day, a few updates for Office 2007 had showed up in the Windows 10 software updates panel. The updates were installed and the VirtualBox machine rebooted, while the main desktop environment continued running normally, with FreeBSD on the laptop.

9:15 AM (Web/Commercial Services)

  • Price Comparison – Web Hosting (Web)

In the morning, I reviewed the service options and pricing for hosting with the cloud services, Digital Ocean and Micorosft Azure. 

Presently, my web site is hosted under a shared Linux environment, using the WordPress support at DreamHost. This hosting option has provided for a low-cost point of entry, with a fairly straightforward configuration process for creating a WordPress site.

Out of an interest for long-term maintainability and later scalability, I would like to update this site’s configuration to use a self-managed host, with any one cloud service provider.

This morning, I reviewed the pricing options, again, for two cloud service providers available on the public Web.

9:20-9:30 AM (Web/Technical)

  • Technical Review – WordPress hosting with Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure provides a form of of support for WordPress hosting. The overview at their web site does not explain exactly which Linux operating system would be used in the arrangement. Presumably, it might be Ubuntu Linux, though theoretically it could be any Linux distribution just as well.

After reviewing the relative cost of offers available at the two cloud service providers, I’ll probably look at Digital Ocean first. Along with Microsoft Azure and a number of other commercial service providers, Digital Ocean has published an offer under GitHub student developer packs.

9:30-9:35 AM (Web/Technical)

  • Checking for continuity in Web service availability at thinkum.space

The Thinkum.Space Web site was created over the weekend. Initially, there were some concerns about a latency or delay in applying some configuration updates. I was also seeing a delay after updating the content of individual blog posts. Though I was not able to resolve this, in the morning, I wanted to be sure that the site was still operating normally, on the Web.

9:40-9:45 AM (Web/Technical)

  • Reviewing options for WordPress hosting at Digital Ocean

After reviewing some information about WordPress support at Microsoft Azure, I took a look at what’s available for WordPress with Digital ocean. Across at least two documents, there’s something of a technical overview:

Under the present hosting arrangement with DreamHost, the earlier technical concerns have cleared up for now. Perhaps it may have been a side effect of some late-night system maintenance procedures at the hosting provider. I’ll try to take a look at the FreeBSD option again, at some later time this year.

9:45 AM (Music)

  • Playlist change – Bad Religion, No Control

9:55 AM – 10:05 AM (Web/Social Media)

  • Reading recent news and views at Twitter

Personally, I believe it’s helpful to keep informed about events beyond the local sphere, for what news is showing up at Twitter. Happily, there were no new world-changing events reported this day.

10:05 AM-10:10 AM (Web/Technical)

  • Reviewing  documentation for email services under self-managed hosting

In order to set up a web hosting arrangement for Thinkum.Space with a private server, it will require the installation of a number of supporting services – a sort of service infrastructure, in a sense. Email would be in one range of features that the host would need. Of course, in FreeBSD – similar to Linux and other generally UNIX-like operating systems – there may be more than one email software system available, for providing this range of features.

This day, I took a look at the installation manual for the Courier Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). I’ll probably install this and/or Dovecot, for email service on the FreeBSD host.

11:15 AM (Music)

  • Playlist change – The Roots, Illadelph halflife

11:35 AM (Interpersonal Communication)

  • Text Messaging

1 PM (Music)

  • Playlist change – Moondog and the London Philharmonic, Sax Pack for Sax

3:15 PM (Music)

  • Playlist change – songs from Simple, by Sylvain Chauveau

3:20 PM (Web/Email, Mobile Text Messaging)

  • Checking email (gmail) and text messages

4:40 PM (Music)

  • Playlist change – Julia Kent

This change of playlist marks the end of the day’s maintenance on the KLR650.

6:10 PM (Web/Streaming Media)

It’s been a few months since I last tuned in to Robert Simmons’ channel at YouTube. Mainly due to a concern about fuel costs – even with 50 MPG on the highway – my KLR650 motorcycle was off the road, since approximately April of this year. Following on the day’s activity in literally cleaning the dust and cobwebs away and a detailed cleaning for the exterior of the bike, furthermore after charging the motorcycle’s battery, this video represented what I believe was a timely overview about motorcycle handling at slow speeds and with a certain style of motorcycle. Robert Simmons was riding a Sport bike for this video.

My own motorcycle might be commonly characterized as an Adventure bike and it may have a somewhat different style of handling, compared to the motorcycle ridden by Robert SImmons in this video. Personally, I was cheered to see that Robert Simmons has given some attention to those of us riding something other than a wide-body cruiser. To my own perspective, the sound of the radiator fan in the video was a welcome feature.

6:45 PM (Web Search)

  • Searching for comparative details about the motorcycle ridden by Robert Simmons, in the video – a Honda CB1000R

My own motorcycle is a Kawasaki KLR650. In one sense, this means that the motorcycle’s engine has a displacement of approximately 650cc in one cylinder.

The engine of the Honda CB1000R – such as with the motorcycle model ridden by Robert Simmons, in the video – it was designed with a 1000cc cylinder displacement, distributed across four cylinders. In a general sense, this may provide a sort of balanced handling for the motorcycle, with each piston successively firing at some offset after the previous. It would probably be a smoother ride than with the single cylinder in the KLR650’s engine.

On a personal note: After the earlier video, I decided to set the carburetor adjustments on my KLR650, to increase the engine’s rotational rate at idle. While this may have a negative effect on fuel mileage and heating in the engine, perhaps it may result in an overall smoother handling experience at slow speeds.

7:40 PM (Mobile Text Messaging)

  • Text Messaging

8:20 PM (Web/Streaming Media, Mobile Text Messaging)

It seems that YouTube has begun supporting a sort of Instagam-like Community page for individual YouTube channels. I spent a few minutes this day, taking a look at the Community news from Robert Simmons. To my own perspective, it was nicer than most days at Instagram.

8:45 – 9:00 PM (Web/Social Media)

  • Twitter

Checking the news again, at end of day.

9:20 PM-10:05 PM (Web/Streaming Media)

This video provides a sort of product review, after what I believe is a fairly interesting topic: How to lift the motorcycle up off of the shop floor, for cleaning and maintenance.

With my KLR650 stored out in the dirt – its natural element, perhaps – I’ll probably continue using a hack that I know. When lifting the motorcycle, e.g when changing the oil or for drivetrain maintenance, personally I use a cross-bar placed across two bottle jacks, negotiated with a third bottle jack placed towards the front. It’s not exactly a decorous arrangement, and may not make for any good video footage at YouTube. Mechanically, it may not be a highly stable way to elevate a motorcycle, but it stores easily at least. Nonetheless, I thought it was interesting to see how the task could be approached in a normal shop.

10:05 PM (Web/Audio Streaming)

Complimentary to any playlists for music on my Android tablet, I usually wind up listening to one or more playlists at Pandora, at some time during the day (or night).

11:10 PM (Web/Email)

  • Checking email

11:20 PM (Web/Technical)

At night, on this Monday, I reviewed the Web hosting at DreamHost again, and discovered the “Delete Cache” button. This feature may serve to provide an immediate workaround for a general concern about a delay after editing, in the public-visible content of a blog entry, with the present hosting provider.

11:50 PM (Web/Technical)

I searched for more information about caching in WordPress, mainly to discover how the “Delete Cache” button might be provided at DreamHost. I found the resource, How to Clear Cache in WordPress, from Astra. This resolved the question, with an introduction to a few WordPress plugins that can be used to provide a generally similar range of features.

Conclusion

Personally, my favorite resource during this hot, dusty day in August, was the content at YouTube from Robert Simmons. If I may be able to ride out to Georgia for a practice session, one day, perhaps it would be on another bike. 

Personally, I believe that Robert Simmons’ content at YouTube has set a high bar not only for how to approach the slow-speed handling of a two-wheel motor-powered vehicle. Considering the video series as it representing a form of instructional content produced within a community-focused approach, I believe it also provides a nice counterpoint for individual concerns about motor vehicle licensing and motor vehicle operation in California and elsewhere.

I wonder how it would be to ride those few thousand miles to Georgia and back, with a battery-powered motorcycle? Though tethered to a concern about finding a charging station, perhaps it would be a comfortable ride overall.

Maybe I could even blog about it…

* This blog entry represents the views of its author, and is not endorsed by Arizona State University or any of its affiliate institutions.

Sean

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