{"$schema":"https://ejfox.com/schema/page-twin@1.json","kind":"blog_post","url":"https://ejfox.com/blog/week-notes/2024-31","json_url":"https://ejfox.com/blog/week-notes/2024-31.json","generator":"ejfox.com/json-twin@1","data":{"cacheVersion":"2026-05-13-gear-cards","html":"

Overview of the Week

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Got back from Hanging with Ben & Kevin at Kevin's cabin. On Monday family helped me move out a lot of the big remaining stuff from my apartment in to storage: bookshelves, desk, bedframe. Everyone helped and left exhausted.

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my-modern-scrapbook: wrote a blog post about the Scrapbook system I have been building, which is good, because I realized how much sprawling work I have put into it without a clear understanding of my motivations. Sitting down to write 2000+ words on it made me really think about that side of things, which is good.

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I also figured out it's super easy to get little videos into my blog posts since I already have an Automator action to automatically via a shell script run through an Automator folder action that triggers anytime a new file is added to screenshots - it automatically uploads videos, too, like the ones recorded if I hit CMD+shift+5 and record a little segment of my screen. Once it's uploaded its URL is copied to my clipboard, and I just swap out mp4 for gif. It's also nice to set some extra Cloudinary processing params like /q_auto/w_768/e_loop/ to make the quality automatic, resize to a width of 768, and loop the gif

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Here's the script that auto-uploads to Cloudinary and appends the screenshot to my weekly note with cld

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#!/bin/bash\n \n# API keys for Cloudinary\nexport CLOUDINARY_URL=cloudinary://foo@bar\n \n# Function to get the current year and week number\nget_weekly_note_path() {\n  local year_week=$(date +%Y-%V)\n  local note_path=\"~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/ejfox/Week Notes/${year_week}.md\"\n  echo \"$note_path\"\n}\n \n# Iterate over each passed argument\nfor file in \"$@\"\ndo\n  # Check if the file exists\n  if [ -f \"$file\" ]; then\n    # Upload to Cloudinary and capture output\n    upload_output=$(/opt/homebrew/bin/cld uploader upload \"$file\" use_filename=true unique_filename=false 2>&1)\n    upload_exit_status=$?\n \n    # Check if the upload was successful\n    if [ $upload_exit_status -eq 0 ]; then\n      # Attempt to extract the URL using the absolute path for jq\n      url=$(echo \"$upload_output\" | /opt/homebrew/bin/jq -r '.url' 2>/dev/null)\n \n      # Check if the URL is non-empty\n      if [ -n \"$url\" ]; then\n        echo \"$url\" | pbcopy\n        # Display success notification with the URL\n        osascript -e \"display notification \\\"Uploaded $file to Cloudinary and URL copied to clipboard: $url\\\" with title \\\"Screenshot Upload\\\"\"\n \n        # Get the weekly note file path\n        weekly_note_path=$(get_weekly_note_path)\n \n        # Append the markdown image format to the weekly note file\n        echo -e \"\\n![Screenshot - $current_date_time - $filename]($url)\" >> \"$weekly_note_path\"\n \n        # Display notification for appending to the weekly note\n        # osascript -e \"display notification \\\"Appended screenshot URL to weekly note: $weekly_note_path\\\" with title \\\"Weekly Note Update\\\"\"\n      else\n        # Display notification for empty URL\n        osascript -e \"display notification \\\"Failed to extract URL from output\\\" with title \\\"Debug\\\"\"\n      fi\n    else\n      # Display notification for upload failure\n      osascript -e \"display notification \\\"Failed to upload $file to Cloudinary. Error: $upload_output\\\" with title \\\"Screenshot Upload\\\"\"\n    fi\n  else\n    # Display notification for file not found\n    osascript -e \"display notification \\\"File does not exist: $file\\\" with title \\\"Debug\\\"\"\n  fi\ndone\n
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Projects Worked On

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Spliff & Espresso

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Creative Endeavors

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I've been playing a lot with Cardinal the free and open-source modular synth, and it's a great way to lose hours of your life to tweaking knobs and dragging cables. It absorbs time almost as well as Crusader Kings 3

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\n\"Modular\n
Modular synthesizer patch in Cardinal software with oscillators, filters, envelopes, and effects connected by colorful signal cables.
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\n\"Search\n
Search results for 'scrap clig' showing Command Line Interface Guidelines, Google search option, local scraps, and Pinboard.
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\n\"Are.na\n
Are.na workspace by hacker-journalist EJ Fox organized into sections of personal projects, coding tutorials, and discussions on politics and technology.
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\n\"Are.na\n
Are.na profile page for EJ Fox, a hacker-journalist, displaying two creative blocks: a 2024 meme about computers and capitalism being mistakes, and information graphics about permanent, temporary, and situational forms of touch and perception.
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\n\"Channel\n
Channel of literary readings and philosophical excerpts exploring masculinity, grief, consumer culture, and beauty through quotes from writers like Karah Wale Al-Hussain.
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\n\"Folder\n
Folder containing numerous screenshot files showing code editors, terminal windows, UI designs, and maps in macOS icon view.
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\n\"Pinboard\n
Pinboard bookmarking feed showing recent saved links about technology, politics, and data journalism from user ejfox.
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\n\"Flowchart\n
Flowchart showing weekly bookmark curation process: gather bookmarks, generate theme, read webpages, extract facts, and write AI summaries back into bookmark metadata.
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\"Screenshot

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\n\"Verbose\n
Verbose scrapbook log tracking pinboard and mastodon posts from July-August 2024, capturing news articles, technical documentation, and commentary on politics, crime, and technology.
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\n\"Network\n
Network diagram connecting bookmarks about marijuana laws, domestic violence ruling, Instagram API library, food vending trailers, and David Kleinman, dated July-August 2024.
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\n\"News\n
News summary showing 56% of Phoenix police officers considering quitting over DOJ oversight concerns, with relationship diagram connecting city council, police department, DOJ, officers, and union.
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\n\"Search\n
Search results showing four instances of 'model: \"gpt-4\"' being replaced with 'gpt-4o-mini' across three JavaScript configuration files.
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\n\"Web\n
Web scraping tool extracting NJ Transit rider complaint data and organizing bookmarked articles by date, source, and content topics.
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\n\"Database\n
Database deletion confirmation dialog warning user that 2,076 rows will be permanently deleted with no undo option.
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\"Screenshot

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\n\"Six\n
Six handmade ceramic mugs by EJ Fox with natural glazes in earth tones and white, priced $30-$40 plus shipping.
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\n\"Handmade\n
Handmade ceramic mugs collection for sale priced $30-40, with artist note about winter experiments and encouraging purchase to support their work.
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","title":"Overview of the Week","metadata":{"tags":["weekly-notes","reflections","progress","coding","automation","music","health"],"modified":"2025-08-28T19:08:25.000Z","date":"2024-07-30T18:56:51.000Z","dek":"In which the author reflects on building a Scrapbook system, experiments with a modular synth, and efficiently uploads videos to their blog posts via Cloudinary.","words":904,"images":19,"imageDetails":{"total":19,"cloudinary":18,"withDimensions":0},"links":22,"codeBlocks":1,"headers":{"h2":3},"toc":[{"text":"Overview of the Week","slug":"overview-of-the-week","level":"h2","children":[]},{"text":"Projects Worked On","slug":"projects-worked-on","level":"h2","children":[{"text":"Spliff & Espresso","slug":"spliff--espresso","level":"h3","children":[]}]},{"text":"Creative Endeavors","slug":"creative-endeavors","level":"h2","children":[]}],"type":"post"}},"_links":{"self":"https://ejfox.com/blog/week-notes/2024-31.json","html":"https://ejfox.com/blog/week-notes/2024-31","index":"/blog.json"}}