Firehose

Some applications and websites have inbuilt theming capabilities. Others lack anything of the sort but can be themed by external means.

I’d prefer people don’t theme or alter my work, as a painter prefers people not to alter their paintings. Please don’t theme our apps pops to mind. Of course, the web is a medium in which some modification can be expected. From zooming, to forcing fonts, to high-contrast mode, etc, people will modify sites. Particularly on the web, people will theme and modify things as they see fit. It is very much part of the platform’s ethos – user agent stylesheets and extensions and whatnot.

I know that I personally alter websites all the time. Whether that be deleting an element, forcing dark mode, stopping an annoying visual effect, or something more substantial. I also know that people have altered websites I’ve worked on (and icons I’ve designed), and that doing so usually makes me feel something adjacent to bad, conjuring thoughts of ‘Have I failed, such that people must undo or change my work?’.

Another line of thought in my own theming of sites (and indeed, creation of my own bespoke apps) is that I’m being exposed to less design. Exposure to different interfaces and flourishes is inspiring. You find new interface patterns and stay up-to-date with trends by seeing what is popular and in use. As a developer and designer, keeping track with what is ‘in’ is important, as is finding inspiration to motivate oneself and apply to other contexts. By forcing everything existing into my own rigid pre-existing structures, I’m walling myself off. In some cases, this is necessary, such as when the design is really bad or user-hostile, but in many other cases it is something I’m doing out of pure comfort with the known.

The screen door effect is the name given to the undesirable visual artefact produced by tiny lines separating pixels and/or subpixels in displays. It is particularly an issue for displays on head-mounted devices, as they are positioned close to the viewer and magnified by lenses. The effect is named for being similar to looking through a screen door, as seen here:

Not only does the screen door effect harm image quality, but it also harms colour, reducing brightness and vibrance by masking the image with darkness.

There are only two file formats: disguised zips and renamed text files.

JSON? Text. EPUB? Zip. CSV? Text. EXE? Zip. SVG? Text. DOCX? Zip. ICS? Text. APK? Zip.

Google’s AI Overview just confidently informed me that the PDA operating system EPOC (which isn’t an acronym and is instead a reference to the term ‘epoch’) actually stands for ‘Electronic Piece of Cheese’.

Unwelcome memories of setting up Windows 10 in bulk and Cortana vomiting its spiel from every single computer simultaneously.

Hi there! I’m Cortana, and I’m here to help. A little sign-in here, a touch of Wi-Fi there, and we’ll have your PC ready for all you plan to do. Use your voice or…

Happened to be at the place I was born the other day, and the thought crossed my mind that, while there, my overall velocity was zero.

Let’s say it takes 30 minutes to read 8000 words, and lets assume that people only read a third of that (10 minutes). Based on my (under-representing) GoatCounter stats, 6000 people viewed my post about browsers on game consoles.

That calculates to people having spent a collective time of over 40 days reading that post.

Lots of vague figures and assumptions here, but still crazy to think about that amount of human life being spent reading my screed.

I’d love to be able to use a writer deck. Some sort of little distraction-free device built just for writing without the luring distractions posed by the rest of a computer. Something with a nice keyboard and pleasant screen – maybe e-ink?

Unfortunately, writer decks just don’t fit my needs. I can identify genuine value for creative writers, or people writing stories for the facts of which they already know, but that is very rarely me. Almost everything I write requires research, so I’m usually split between my writing buffer and a browser, and by the time a browser is introduced, the benefit of a writer deck is nullified.

In addition to traversing the World Wide Web for research, much of my writing is technical, so I find myself needing a way to write code and test it. That means I need to configure – and maintain – a development environment, and that whatever device I might use as a writer deck needs to be capable of performing these development tasks, ideally at such a speed that it doesn’t break my writing flow.

I’d love a writer deck, and it’d be fit for writing a novel or the likes, but for my needs I’m afraid it is impractical.

Absolutely bonkers to see a single person referenced as ‘Web Implementer’ in the credits for old browsers. Even slightly later browsers with a small team of five or so people absolutely blow my mind.

The early web was a very different beast to the one we know now, that’s for sure.

Every single time someone talks to me at a normal speaking pace after I’ve been using a screen reader at Mach 10 speeds, it sounds like they’re ultra-drunk.

I dug out my old graphic design portfolio.

I love it for being an almost physical manifestation of my website, albeit a slightly older version. The colours and type might have changed since I put this portfolio together, but the general style remains intact.

Stumbling towards the domain registrar with a crisp note in my hand in the same fashion as the drunk stumbles towards the bar with hand outstretched, steadying himself momentarily on the back of your chair before taking another step and finding himself on the floor.

At Maccas and we see a dozen or more rats scuttering around the car park bins. We pull up to the drive-thru window and mention ‘Wow, you’ve got a lot of rats out there!’.

We finish ordering and as we drive on she yells to her manager through the busy restaurant ‘This guy says we’ve got rats!’.

🤦

Sometimes people message me to say thanks to me for sharing my code publicly, because it has helped them understand something.

Such messages reach me sending electric strikes of fear into my heart. I can’t stress enough how bad of an idea referencing any of my code is. I feel I must apologise.

Just discovered this is a thing you can do if you’re so inclined. https://youtube.com/tv works on non-television devices (as long as you spoof your user agent).

I love when platforms shut down due to a flawed business model lacking profitability, so another platform comes along aiming to fill the void left by the old platform but also copies the flawed business model, also fails to profit, and then also shuts down.

One of my favourite genres of business.

‘Did you add an extra page to the site just so the footer links would balance nicely?’

Me? No. Pfft. I— Y’know— Me? Ha. I— I’d never! Not something I’d do… nope…

If you suffer from acne or get the occasional pimple, you may be familiar with pimple patches. The good (non-psuedoscience/gimmick) patches are hydrocolloid patches, which absorb the fluid and form a gel from it.

You can buy rolls of adhesive hydrocolloid dressings for prices that are negligible compared to a comparable volume of pimple patches at their premium prices. Patches cut from hydrocolloid rolls aren’t usually quite as invisible as purpose-designed patches, but they are transparent. The raise around the edge of the patch due to its non-tapered thickness is the most obvious part, but you could feasibly trim them yourself to minimise the visibility.

You can cut these rolls to suit, only using as much as you need, and they’ve been proven both scientifically and anecdotally to work on popped and unpopped pimples while deterring scarring due to the moist healing process. They do not work on deep, blind cystic acne or blackheads, however. In addition to hydrocolloid’s properties, a patch also disincentivises idle picking and protects the site from muck and bacteria. Even if you buy a hydrocolloid roll and find it useless for treating pimples, it is still a valuable tool more generally for burns, cuts, and scrapes.

To use, you should first gently wash and then dry the application site. Next, cut the patch to size, peel off the backing, and apply it where needed. I’ve had great success with them.

The only agent I’m trusting is Agent 86, Maxwell Smart. He is a long serving member of CONTROL, a secret US government counterintelligence agency.