(blows away the cobwebs and dust)

…amazing how a facet of adult life is getting so freaking busy with every last thing in front of you that you can go like 18 months without remembering to write something on your blog.

In the name of playing catch-up, I want to give some updates on the projects that I’ve been engaged in while away. And given I mostly write about my work in technology here, I figure I’ll start with my Owncast efforts.

I love Owncast, of course. It’s a critical part of my online DJ presence as MXKS. I’ve really enjoyed using it to stream to my friends and fans…and I do occasionally meet someone who says “Oh, MXKS! I love your streams!” So, when I was looking for something to get more involved in, that was at the top of the list. The big challenge, of course, is that I don’t have much background in web technologies, so it’s hard for me to easily contribute to its codebase (though I’ve done a small change for them).

The big thing I’ve believed in, though, is fostering a community of streamers around Owncast. The biggest challenge any streamer has, regardless of platform, is discoverability. People largely get famous on Twitch because Twitch decides to push them; everyone else has to push and scrape and hustle, and they typically also have to prove their value to Twitch by getting people to support them (from which Twitch gets revenue). Of course, Owncast has no such model, so everyone’s streaming in a public way is trying to build community.

It’s that aspect of having more community among the engineers, streamers, and viewers of Owncast, that I sought to improve through writing a regular newsletter. Owncast has no “TV Guide” to introduce streams or let you know that interesting events are coming up. So, to try and start the process of making that happen, I created the Owncast Newsletter. I’ve been running it somewhere between monthly and bimonthly since late 2023, putting one out an edition “as needed” in a way. It’s got technical updates, upcoming events, and featurettes on people’s streams. It’s loved and helped build a more unified sense of community, even if it’s not quite yet hit my dreams of a true “TV Guide” experience. I’m proud of what I’ve been able to offer on my own.

The other big thing that I really wanted to make my Owncast experience complete was support for Roku. I DJ in a room that has a Roku attached to the TV on the wall, and it’s a great way for me to make sure my stream’s up and working. Sometimes, I’ll have friends over to dance and put a second camera on them, and having the stream on the TV lets them see themselves. There was an Owncast Roku client…of sorts. It didn’t work reliably and often its updates from the Owncast Directory would come hours late. I got into talking with Gabe (the Owncast founder) about it and he mentioned to me that it was an outdated app and that Roku would be terminating support for it in the coming months, and that maybe that was for the best.

For me, that was not for the best. I actually love flipping on the TV and seeing what streams are on, and I use it to check on my own stream. So, there was really no other choice. I was going to have to write a Roku app. I ended up spending much of my holiday break from work teaching myself Brightscript and adapting some SGDEX sample code to get it working, but I was able to get a new Owncast Roku channel going. It was pretty basic and crude, in part because SGDEX is hard to work with, but it got the job done.

It’s mostly just been a single release until the past month. We’ve been blessed with a new developer joining the effort, and unlike me, this person actually knows what they’re doing. We’ve had a nice, full rewrite, and we’ve fully open sourced the project so we can attract issue reports and new contributions.

There was a time when I’d have looked at my skills and the project and just thought, “not a match, oh well”, but this has been an interesting effort in spreading my wings and supporting a FOSS project without leaning on my core skillset, and it’s also been really surprising how much you can do for yourself if you just look for places to contribute and don’t have unrealistic expectations. Neither of these things exactly set the world on fire, but they do provide important components in the broader ecosystem of a project I believe in.