BUFFSCAN
Switched Up Streaming Scanner
03/18/2025
Anyone who visits the BuffScan YouTube livestreaming channel on any regular basis will notice the dramatic change of presentation. The reason is that I’ve switched the scanner used for this purpose from a Uniden SDS200 to a Radio Shack PRO-652, and the control software interface is obviously much different between them.
I did this to make better “hobby use” of the much more expensive SDS200.
That's the one line explanation but read on if you want more open renumeration of my thought process with this.
When I first bought the SDS200 I noticed that it included a rich feature set for broadcasting over the internet. The feature set I mention included a number of ways to do so, which, when all was said and done, I wound up settling on the one way that didn’t actually take any unique advantage of the SDS200 specifically. Rather, I wound up just livestreaming my “server” (workstation) display, which included a running ProScan instance, to YouTube via OBS, a popular streaming platform for Windows.
Having engineered this generic process to the point of working, I never stopped to contemplate that I could have been doing so all along using my old scanner (the aforementioned PRO-652).
The end result of this inefficiency was that I now had a super expensive and powerful scanner that was tied up on a 24/7 public presentation. A situation that meant, for no exceptional reason, that I couldn’t use it to play around and hone my scanning skills with -- at least without interrupting the public presentation. I couldn’t explore the much wider listening surface that the SDS200's digital capacities allowed for.
The bottom line is that using it for livestreaming, especially in the generic manner that I was, meant a lot of its value was going to waste. The PRO-652 looks just as good on screen with its own control software while more importantly being able to scan all the systems of interest to the BuffScan livestream.
Ergo, using the SDS200 over the PRO-652 as the livestream box literally added no extra benefit but was depriving me of fun and learning, wasting money in the process.
As I mentioned, I had been so hyper focused on “mad-sciencing” the OBS to YouTube stream, this glaring strategic mistake never occurred to me.
So, this past weekend, I spent quite a bit of time making things right by swapping the two scanners. Aside from the aesthetic, listeners won’t notice much of a difference.
In fact I see some advantages in using the simpler scanner. For instance, it scans faster. The SDS, for all of its sophistication, is a damn degree slower at cycling through the frequencies. Consequently, I believe, it was far more prone to fragmenting conversation streams. I also noticed that the SDS200’s ProScan transmission log was irrational. It never ordered them right or when it did, it agitated and bothered the rows in such a way that you couldn’t follow. The PRO-652 is much simpler and straightforward, and while not as nice as the SDS’s grid, actually rolls out the transmission history accurately. If you’re curious about who made the last transmission it’s now literally right there as the latest entry on the log output, no fuss, no muss.
I don’t find much difference in the audio quality either but this isn’t saying much. All around the table digital transmissions sound like garbage in my opinion. And no degree of tweaking helps that. In this digital age you have to sort of train yourself on the local public safety vernacular to eventually learn and know that “shendfowuck” is “send a tow truck”, as one example.
I realize that audio on the actual in-use radios of these systems are much clearer to their end users. Scanner radios by contrast have a lot more to balance with their engineering. The SDS200 was "okay" but I’m losing faith there will ever be a scanner radio that matches actual use quality. If the SDS200 can’t fully do it what hope is there that anything can?
Anyway, that’s the reason for the switch out. I am sorry for any inconvenience that the turbulence may have caused in doing so, but I am now fully enjoying my expensive SDS200 in the way that it was meant to be while still, hopefully, providing a great service to the community.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Jail Roster is Now the BuffScan Pokey Report
01/08/2025
Just because I like the linguistic play of it, the daily Erie County jail rosters I've been posting will now be called the "BuffScan Pokey Report".
BuffScan Pokey Report
The following are fresh listings in the publicly distributed Erie County Jail Roster as of yesterday.
Booking Date 1/7/2025
- ALFONSO, ANTHONY G
- BOGLE, CHRISTIAN J
- BRANT, MEGAN L
- CARPINO, MARK
- CHAMBERS, FRANKLIN
- CRISSELL, ZACKERY
- DAVIS, FREDRICK
- DEMOSTHENE, JACKEY
- GULLEDGE, DONTAY
- HARRISON, MOSES
- JACKSON, PERNELL M
- KAMPREY, JENNIFER
- KEHR, RONALD
- KEMNITZER, COLLEEN M
- KOSOWSKI, CHRISTOPHER
- KRAUSE, CHRISTOPHER M
- LIVERPOOL, MICHAEL
- LUPER, LIONEL
- RAMADAN, MOHAMMED E
- SMITH, MATTHEW
- THOK, JEREMIAH
- THOMPSON, HASHEEN
In providing this convenient aggregate listing please keep in mind the following: Incarceration in county jail does not imply guilt - statistically, most inmates are in fact legally innocent and are only incarcerated pending further legal proceedings. As well, many circumstances including mental health and addiction issues can lead to behavioral turbulence and conflicts with society that result in jail. In noting incarceration status please adopt a compassion-first regard.
For a variety of reasons the given list may not be all inclusive of those individuals actually processed.
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Thanks Mitchell!
01/06/2025
You may have noticed that the BuffScan live streaming scanner feed has been up since a whopping November under the same feed URL. Just prior to that it was going offline even more than average due to various network hiccups. And, each time, coming up with a new URL after I manually restored it.
This whole thing is after all hosted on residential infrastructure and prone to power outages if I toast bread and run the microwave at the same time. And more actually, network hiccups for no strange reason.
Well halleluiah to community engagement efforts. BuffScan appreciator "Mitchell" noticed my point about "bookmarking the channel" instead of the link, to mitigate this problem, and turned me on to a simple YouTube setting that would ensure that following such interruptions, as long as the OBS server itself doesn't crash (it's on a power backup), every stream would pick up under the active URL where it left off before. I should have figured there was one.
Have you ever tried simply turning off the auto-end functionality on YouTubes Live Streaming? Or, if you're streaming from the live-now function, have you tried the event based streaming under the bottom Manage icon? This allows you to stop the stream and start it without ending the full stream and producing a new link.
It took some time to demonstrate that this works, but it does. I have had a number of network interruptions since applying the setting and users on the public side never knew. The new resilience is incredible.
There is the caveat that the livestream cannot be played back for the period of time that such an interruption actually occurs, but I have to imagine this is rare. The important thing is that BuffScan keeps on -- well, "BuffScanning".
Thanks Mitchell! I haven't had cause to edit the BuffScan notes but suffice to say I'll be changing them to reflect that fact that, yes, now people can more confidently bookmark a URL directly to the feed if they want.
Latest Erie County Jail Bookings
The following are fresh listings in the publicly distributed Erie County Jail Roster as of yesterday.
Booking Date 1/5/2025
- BLANCHE, KEVIN
- BYRD, JAMES
- JIMERSON, AYDEN
- KAIGLER, ARZELL
- MANGHAM, MILLER
- SCHIEDEL, TREVOR
- STRYCHALSKI, NICHOLAS A
- WILLIAMS, JAMMEAL T
In providing this convenient aggregate listing please keep in mind the following: Incarceration in county jail does not imply guilt - statistically, most inmates are in fact legally innocent and are only incarcerated pending further legal proceedings. As well, many circumstances including mental health and addiction issues can lead to behavioral turbulence and conflicts with society that result in jail. In noting incarceration status please adopt a compassion-first regard.
For a variety of reasons the given list may not be all inclusive of those individuals actually processed.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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BuffScan NYC People Fusion Engine
12/22/2024
The BuffScan Instance of the New York City People Fusion is live. Create your account here.
Okay, so -- I've been busy for the past decade developing the "New York City People Fusion". It's an anonymous communication exchange platform by design that is meant to sit in an open computer browser tab on a PC device. The realities of digital demographics today are that anyone who reads this and tries it will nonetheless attempt to do so from their smartphone. Go ahead, but it's not going to be pretty.
Yes I wrote "decade". I wrote it while living in, ha, New York City, then let it rot. Never pushed it, never actually completed development to the extent that I have in the past few months.
Only now when I feel that principles of the communication style inherent to the original web and internet need to be restored and promoted by someone, christ, even if that is me, did I take to going back to it and almost re-writing it from scratch.
The BuffScan project, the effort to replace police scanning with something else, benefits as the first real-world iteration of the re-write. Within it is the starry-eyed vision that the parameters of the effort, not to mention the behind-the-scenes discussion of digital content collection and distribution related to public safety, come to life.
Couple of things you will find refreshingly odd about it.
First, you will notice no graphics except photos posted in the topic areas by users like you. Graphics inhibit the service and its development. Early BBSes relied on only ASCII for graphics, and this why so many people were able to start and support them. You might find it jarring at first, but you'll come to appreciate it, quick.
Second, it's for the computer, not your smartphone. This is why I saw BuffScan as such an ideal vehicle for its development iteration (which it is). People into police scanners, dramatic digital collection and distribution, are, by my measure, exactly the same type of people that have desktop PCs or laptops still part of their ensemble. An open session of BuffScan NYCPF is meant to live open in a browser tab on your PC, right next to your radio equipment or on the same PC you're processing videos. Yes, you can try to use it through a smartphone - maybe to quickly review a curiosity or create an account, but, it's not designed for that and results will vary. Desktop PC culture (which I label the "Console Culture") is real and will only get more significant in time.
It's also not a monetization effort. Everything exists to provide service and utility. There are no ads and nothing in the background slowing things down by way of telemetry. I am trying to develop a cause, not make the bucks.
Finally, you will notice that it is a communication that allows front-facing anonymity and tags. Technically, unless I intervene directly, there's nothing to stop this from turning into a weird dating site where people can still do "MFF" or "FFM" type searches. But, that's exactly it. The NYC People Fusion engine does allow a sole admin -- the "SysOp" (anyone remember that title - if you do, sounds like I just jostled a new member) to closely police the site and therefore, allow said anonymous chatter. It's not absolute anonymity -- as SysOp I could probably deduce anyone's identiy in any number of ways, but as the old internet didn't concern itself with that -- as long as nobody got weird -- that is how users expressed themselves freely.
I'm not saying there won't be problems or shall we say "adventures". I'm saying to you, become a part of them. While developing the BuffScan project, you will also be doing your part to retain the liberties of the old web and internet. These are two causes meant for each other and I am thrilled to have engineered this meld of them.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Why People Gotta Log In to View My X Stuff?
02/24/2024
Update 2/27/24 - This issue has prompted me to complete a full jump to @Threads. From now on BuffScan microblogging can be reviewed and subscribed to at @BuffaloScan. Note the variation in spelling ("BuffaloScan", not "BuffScan").
I recently discovered that my X content isn't accessible unless you log into X. I have two X accounts and this problem applies to both of them.
Neither account is set to privatize my content, either.
It's obviously a bug but there doesn't seem to be a clear path to reporting it, particularly if you're not a paying user of X. They do have a help and support center but all of the boilerplate forms one would submit don't apply to this particular situation.
As a bug, I suspect it's tied to X's activity over last summer when they did in fact try to force people to log in in order to view people's feeds. They rolled that back pretty quick, but maybe something about my accounts got left behind.
I'm basically de-platformed on X -- at least to the extent that I can't microblog to the random world at large. Ironically, I have no problem taking my borderline mental illness rants to Threads for my personal account or new projects, but BuffaloScan on X has almost 500 subscribers that I'd like to keep my reach with. And, while I am enamored by Threads, despite whatever issues X has with its stability (as a service, and the particular man running it), I still think X the most evolved and feature reach microblogging tool on the market, if using one is important. I'd like to have it as an option while I continue to weigh which service I intend to ultimately run with if either.
Otherwise, I guess X is making the decision for me.
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The Slowest Roll Out Ever: The BuffScan Subreddit
01/01/2024
Quite some time ago I posted some dramatic BuffScan content to r/Buffalo/ on Reddit. Because I had done so more than a few times, another Reddit user suggested creating a new subreddit to host that sort of content.
That actually seemed like a good idea - no offense was taken since I sort of view /r/Buffalo to be like a free-form "Good Morning America" for Buffalo to some degree -- not a place where people necessarily seek direct contact with the sort of drama I sometimes post. So I did it.
Behold /r/BuffScan/.
But that was actually about two years ago and although I had gone through with the basic creation of the group, I didn't develop or advertise it much.
Now with some holiday time off, I finally did and am -- at least to the extent that I wrote out a group description and some pretty basic rules.
I encourage anyone who has collected content to make at least a secondary post in the subreddit outside their primary platform of choice. I myself will post some legacy stuff in addition to moving forward, just to prime the machine. As well, I'll post public links to content that others make available online of the same genre.
I am not sure this new subreddit is really needed in the grand scheme of things in the first place, but down the road, if it seems necessary, I'd like to accept candidates to administer the group. Those who are already in the habit of collecting ground coverage seem like a good potential resource for that.
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I Don't Think it Works That Way
08/28/2023
A Monday Perp Turkey. This video circulating in social media shows a woman accused in a Ring app post of criminal activity, outsmarting technology.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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My Decision is Rated X
07/29/2023
Hi everyone, BuffScan is not abandoning social media or specifically Twitter (now called X) after all.
You can read about my as-tortureous reasoning for rolling back that plan as you can the reasoning I had for trying to do so in the first place.
Although I can no longer embed Twitter feeds at this website, which was extremely handy, it is still the leading and inexpensive microblogging instrument for spot media distribution.
I also recently secured the BuffScan username on Instagram because down the road I think the Insta/Threads combination will be a better choice, though, let's face it, it is quickly becoming apparent that being "everywhere" like most professional social media managers already understand, is going to be ultimately important.
Given this pivot, my information about how to follow this blog has been updated.
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Getting Rid of Reach
07/10/2023
Following the implosion of Twitter in July 2023 I decided to activate a loosely devised strategy of eliminating "reach" as a driving component of BuffScan and all of my blogging projects.
Until then, Twitter had been viewed as the best social media platform to act as both a direct conduit to a critical mass audience and a bargain instant-publishing host that could effectively drop content onto the BuffScan blog through the service's ability to embed a timeline. The BuffScan Twitter feed was a superior mechanical compliment to a site like this without competing with it as the platform.
But with the shutting down of or the unexplained breaking down of Twitter's timeline embeds, I quit using Twitter for that purpose.
Fortunately, thanks to some personal engineering here on my personally-developed Battle Blog platform, and to the fediverse-oriented "Mastodon", I found ways to maintain "instant publishing" capabilities right from the firegrounds or crime scenes.
If there is a fire that I am in a position to report on, I have the means to put a picture of it up at this blog in seconds, right from my phone. Straight to the blog itself, or, if I prefer, straight to Mastodon thanks to its ability to allow timeline embeds -- the thing Twitter once did well but stopped. There's no loss of immediate publishing.
What can't be replaced however is reach. Which is to really say, I cannot rely on serendipitous exposure to thousands of people with each artifact of content that I produce. Exposure leads to discovery and content consumption, and in the best outcomes, leads to unsolicited shares and permanent subscribers.
For many bloggers and website producers reach has become the keystone objective and measure of their website's worth. Not achieving it, or not achieving it right away, has despirited many publishers into quitting the craft. Without an audience it is natural to ask what is the point.
But I am going to buck that line of thinking. First because of Twitter's demise, which proves you can't rely on social media in any form to become a defacto content machine for your production.
And second, because specifically not relying on "instant audiences" and "instant reach" as a blog producer, I am challenged to push more interesting content that make the publication stick on encounter.
Maybe a more eloquent way of putting it is that I want to fail because I am boring; too understaffed to produce meaningful content; perhaps talentless as a writer and editor, or quite more likely, all of the above.
I don't want to fail because I didn't copy/paste enough to a dozen social media channels, all while losing my publishing independence in the process.
My newfound strategy, after all, is what we did before social media. We relied on word of email (forwarding and listservs if you remember any of that), and most crucially, interlinking between individual producers. Your blog linked to my blog, and my blog linked to yours. And people sitting down at PCs with their cups of coffee and a desire to explore, clicked from one place to another, bookmarking whatever they thought fancied a future visit.
That's how a website or blog got its traction for "realzies" and I am blowing the dust off that old playbook to make it happen again.
Had it not been for Twitter's meltdown I'd have gone along with being buried by the reality that nobody "surfs the web" anymore. Nobody is interlinking between their web personas.
To get right down to it, nobody is linking at all. Hyperlinking has gradually morphed into a scary proposition that only hackers try to bait you with. Me sending someone a link to my latest blog entry via e-mail would only likely terrify a recipient into deleting the message straight away.
I think Death of Hyperlink, The Aftermath by Hossein Derakshsan spells out this reality well enough, and is a worthy read.
There's def going to have to be some unwinding of the past decade to make this work. But I'll take that chance. After what happened to Twitter, we know now that we can't rely on big tech to be the revolution in our little Information Age.
We the the real people with a thirst to communicate and explore have been that revolution the entire time. Twitter's crumble just snapped us -- well me -- back into the game.
I'll be following up with the new ways that you can follow this and my other blogs.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Police Radio is Going Out Of Service
04/15/2023
If you are one of the people who circulate among the social media or internet circles that a site like this might come to your attention through, it's fair to guess that you have some relationship to a police scanner.
You're the classical police scanning hobbyist, such as myself; work in public safety, or maybe work with the media.
Whatever the case, you're the type of person that needs to hear and know the following: Police scanners are going away. Police scanning is evaporating.
I am unfurling a vision of something to replace it that is much more exciting, engaging, and useful. And to the extent that it involves radios and structured radio communication, will by its very nature, actually save a variation of public safety monitoring despite all the foils of encryption and policy derision against chaotic transparency. In the world that I write out here, there will be something to tune in to and even to participate in directly -- if that world actualizes.
I need an opening entry, and something as plain and blunt as this one is really the gist, the point, and the start of a beautiful story.
You can read about the mission of this blog here.
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