Stratford-revered glockenspiel stops working

liv, 1 month ago

Noooo I hope they can fix it!

I love glockenspiels and wanted to see it one day! (What can I say, in order to be realistic my travel aspirations have become very small).

Dave, 1 month ago

I’m sure it will be fine. But it is nearly 30 years old so maybe don’t bet on it being around for too long.

I tried to find info about others, but a glockenspiel is a musical instrument and I think the clock things are named after the Rathaus-Glockenspiel, so I’m not sure how to search for others and work out an average life span 😆

liv, 1 month ago

Search engines have really gone to hell. It’s one of those words with two meanings.

Here’s the one I most want to see, in Hamlyn

Here’s the Graz one

Here’s a random one in Texas

I don’t think it would help us estimate, though, because it depends on quality of manufacture and some of them were made like a century ago. I’ll just have to hope for the best!

Dave, 1 month ago

Wow you must have some awesome google-fu! I’m not sure if search engines can be blamed, since the Wikipedia disambiguation page doesn’t mention this kind of glockenspiel.

I don’t think it would help us estimate, though, because it depends on quality of manufacture and some of them were made like a century ago. I’ll just have to hope for the best!

Time to start planning!

liv, 1 month ago

Planning to make our own glockenspiel?!😀

It’s much easier to find something if you know it’s a thing. But I think google (and maybe wikipedia) failed us on this. If I win lotto I’ll give that paid search engine a go.

Dave, 1 month ago

The secret is that paid search engine is a search aggregator. They take results from Google, Bing, Brave, etc and then order them with some tweaks.

And for the record, I tried it and it didn’t help in this case.

Planning to make our own glockenspiel?!😀

I wasn’t, but even if I wanted to all I can find are instructions on making glockenspiel instruments 🙁

liv, 1 month ago

I can’t find it either, though I bet I could find something rudimentary in a library. But it’s an old artisan skill, so the only real way to learn is to apprentice ourselves to a master clockmaker. I did however spot how to build one in Roblox!

What has your general experience of Kagi been like? Disappointed it was no better at this.

Dave, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Before Kagi I was running self hosted Searx (technically searxng as it keeps getting forked) which is a search aggregator. It runs the same search over multiple engines then lists the results based on which ones come up the most often. I like Searx but it’s slow (takes a few seconds to retrieve all results from search engines and build the page). Kagi does the same but is very fast.

I’m not sure the search results are generally better with Kagi but it does have some great features. E.g. you can block, lower, raise, or pin certain sites. So I block all the Pinterest domains so they don’t show up in results, and I pin Wikipedia so if it’s in the results it’s always at the top.

Raise and lower just bump up or down that site’s importance.

There are also some AI things like summarising pages and one I recently discovered is you can type in a question and get a chatGPT-like response (but it’s not using chatGPT).

I think the main reason I use it is not that it’s better but that I like to support projects that are trying to do things different, I want a world to exist where a search engine can sustain itself without ads (since I’m gonna block them anyway). I’m lucky that the cost isn’t an issue for me, so I see this as a way to support the goal.

If you want to test it out, you can sign up for 100 free searches (and can then also have a look around all the customisation options), but if you’re already a pretty skilled searcher I wouldn’t expect it to be significantly better.

liv, 1 month ago

That’s a bit disappointing. I probably do have good search skills but the way search engines are going it takes more effort these days to get the same level of results, so I was aspiring for something that could help if I ever got to the point I could afford it.

Next time I’m doing a big project I’ll give the 100 free searches a whirl.

I was hoping it was more like vivisimo/clusty which used to clump results in patterns, or old version altavista which used to dredge up 10x more results than other engines.

Good on you for supporting tech goals and stuff. That’s really cool.

Dave, 1 month ago

They have lenses, which is a way of searching under specific categories (For example, “Recipes” or “Programming”). But this is kinda the opposite, it’s not grouping results by category but rather filtering by category.

You could check out searxng as well. I ran it on a server but it’s the kind of thing you could probably run locally on your laptop (and perhaps that would be best, so you can always access it without running a service for the world). I haven’t tried it, but you could probably do it using Docker Desktop. It should all be pretty light weight and run on pretty much anything. Could be a fun project!

liv, 1 month ago

Thanks, I will bookmark that!

I’m learning so much it stuff by lurking around here! You guys are single handedly catching me up to this decade.

Dave, 1 month ago

Haha I learn lots here too! The self-hosted communities are about the only niche thing that is mainstream here!

You also teach me about slugs and stuff 😆

liv, 1 month ago

Ha ha that’s right I forgot about your tiger slug! Did that work out for you as a pet or did it roam away?

Dave, 1 month ago

Still there, last I checked. Doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger, though. I feel a little not like the lady in the Roald Dahl book Esio Trot thinking her tortoise is growing too slow.

Dave, 1 month ago

I’m not sure why but I found this article hilarious, or at least its existance. Council’s thing breaks. They will get someone to look at it ASAP. Thank you for reading.

I remember this opening, which I don’t normally remember much but apparently I remember a clocktower in small town Taranaki opening. That it was almost 30 years ago is also a little scary.