This post covers the week ending Dec 4 and the week ending Dec 11, since it was a bit of a rush leading up to EmacsConf.

• EmacsConf 2024 went well, hooray! Here are some of my journal entries over the past two weeks:
  • I worked on the BigBlueButton server some more. I used Spookfox to automate Firefox from Emacs Lisp so that I could add moderator codes to all the BBB rooms. That way, speakers can let themselves in if needed, since we might be understaffed. (Might need to ask the mailing list if anyone wants to volunteer to host, which is mostly reading out questions and making conversation.) I also updated the Tampermonkey script so that the user in the VNC session will be able to join the web conference automatically.
  • I added shell scripts to copy the BBB redirect files so that I can easily do that by hand in case I don't get the automation sorted out again over the next week.
  • Livestreaming to Toobnix seems to be iffy at the moment, so I'll just focus on 480p and YouTube. I'll probably end up manually copying and pasting the stream keys for each event, so I've added them to the shift checklists to make that easier for myself.
  • I confirmed crontab and publishing still worked, and I processed some last-minute submissions. I also sent the check-in emails and fixed my email delivery verification.

  • 2024-12-08T00:40:59.681Z

    #emacsconf day 1 wasn't 100% smooth, but it was 100% fun, and people rerouted around all of the tech hiccups. I think we've figured out the color issue (needed to update mpv from 0.35 to 0.38), I updated my scripts to take the video files from the cache directory instead of other directories that I forgot to update, updated the checklist to have the right URLs, enabled case-fold-search on the other Emacs, and added random package mentions to the countdown screen. I forgot to let zaeph know I edited one of the videos, so next time I should flag that somehow. I'm not 100% sure about our BBB setup; a couple of people's computers crashed. On the plus side, this year, sooo many people helped out with captions and quality checks. Improving little by little! :D The important stuff got done: people got to see things and chat with other people!

  • The second day of EmacsConf went pretty well! We managed to handle a couple of last-minute uploads.
  • I processed the EmacsConf Q&As to add chapter indices and correct a number of misrecognized words. I also copied comments from of IRC and YouTube.
  • I modified the VTT separator regexp for subed.el.

  • swapping roles 2024-12-08T02:34:12.554Z

    I had a lot of fun watching Leo Vivier, Corwin Brust, and FlowyCoder fluidly swap roles as needed during #emacsconf . It was like professional jugglers dancing, one tossing a ball up in the air, the other shifting into place to catch it, the third getting the next ones lined up so things keep moving smoothly.

  • I dropped by Lispy Gopher Show again to chat about Emacs, Emacs Lisp, and EmacsConf with screwtape.

    • 2024-12-11T16:41:12.384Z

    @screwtape I imagine it could be useful to have a smart radio object that could tell someone how many minutes until your next show and where to listen to it (saves us from UTC conversions); do the same for other anonradio shows; search for a keyword in your archives (even just the descriptions); and maybe even allow other people to contribute a note that can be reviewed and included in the archive description for an episode

  • Q&A update 2024-12-12T14:48:25.451Z

    Yay, I've copied the rest of the comments from IRC and YouTube to the #EmacsConf talk pages, so speakers will be able to review them in one go. I've also copied some sections out of the transcripts for quick answers. I might send the speakers the thanks email with the discussion and main talk video links, but without links to the Q&A videos yet.
    
    BigBlueButton audio mixing was as usual a bit of a challenge, with some participants quiet and some participants louder. BBB saves only mixed audio. It would be nice to see if I can get separate audio recordings next year by configuring https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/issues/12302 , but that sounds a little complicated. Instead of taking over the task of messing with the audio in the current recordings (which I tend to flub because I don't have the patience for it :) ), I can leave space for other people to do things. Instead, I can focus on the other tasks I've been procrastinating. :)

• Life:
  • A- felt that the Outschool club was worth keeping because she likes the people.
  • We all practised shinny at High Park. Nice! A- and I worked on our stops once it was time to move over to the leisure skate area. We've also skated even though there was a light drizzle.
  • W- enjoyed helping out with the Bike Brigade.
  • A+'s CCAT scores qualified her for the next step in the TDSB gifted identification process. I've been trying to figure out what this could look like for us. There's probably no gifted program for virtual school, so it might look much like what we've already got. We've been talking about how to adapt to systems that are designed for other people. At the moment, it seems to work better for her if I sit with her during boring parts of class and help her explore things like coding with Python (or help her get her homework out of the way), so I don't have much focused time myself. It's important to us that she feels good about learning and that she learns how to work with/around systems, so spending that time is worthwhile. It just means that I have to be strategic about what I do.