Firehose

My life’s prime directive is to not end up with a Wikipedia page written about me containing a ‘Controversies’ section.

I partly got into coding because computers were determinate and did exactly what they were instructed to reliably and without variance. If there was a problem, it was because your code was wrong.

But, congrats everyone, because by shoving AI everywhere we’ve made computers indeterminate.

It all went awry when we got rid of wizards in our setups.

‘Networking’ on Bluesky has been spades more effective for me than other platforms like LinkedIn or even the Fediverse. There is something special happening here.

(I hate using the term ‘networking’ here, because it makes the connections sound shallow and non-genuine, and that isn’t the case.)

I have become rather adept at walking through crowds such as those found on a busy city street in the morning. I’ve refined a system to allow effective navigation, and people I’ve introduced it to have found success, so I’ve documented it here:

1. Ensure your posture is exemplary. Chin raised, straight back – as if a straight metal rod starts at the base of your spine and runs up into your head. Do not round your shoulders.

2. Walk at a brisk pace. You should have a slight air of importance and urgency. If possible, wear shoes which stomp slightly and produce a bit of a sound. Formal shoes often do as much. Do not slow down unless it would put you in danger or cause a collision.

3. Look at a fixed distance straight ahead. Do not look at a fixed object. If something such as a person breaks your line of sight, look beyond them rather than adjusting the distance of your gaze. You aren’t looking at the people in front of you beyond knowing where they are but instead looking directly through them. You should mostly be keeping track of your surroundings via your peripheries, but when you do need to look to the side, do not twist your neck but instead move your shoulders to rotate your head.

4. As you walk, do not pivot to move side to side, but instead drift left and right while keeping yourself facing directly forward.

This system is based on confidence and only works for moving through crowds that can see you. If you’re walking with the flow, disregard and dodge and weave. If the flow is moving in two directions, you might be able to work against the grain.

At no point should you be hindering the movement of others, cutting others off, or otherwise being a pest or nuisance.

Every now and then someone says something to the effect of ‘We have this new modern CSS thing. We don’t need to set the z-index to 99999 anymore!’.

I wish to make myself clear. I set my z-indexes to 99999 as a matter of principle, not necessity. You can pry z-index: 99999 from my corpse.

I see people say frequently that they don’t need to support older browsers because ‘everything auto-updates now’. This is a flawed assumption.

There are many reasons why someone might not have up-to-date browsers:

• Their device is too old. This is especially a problem with Apple devices, where the version of Safari is largely tied to the version of the OS.
• They never use their device long enough to trigger an update. I’ve previously had elderly tech-support clients who only used their computer sporadically for emails and banking and therefore didn’t receive updates because they weren’t using their computer long enough for new versions to install.
• They’re using a browser in an embedded context or on a ‘smart’ device, where there is no newer version available.
• Enterprise policies or restrictions don’t yet permit them to update their browser.
• They’re using a browser fork which lags behind in releases.
• They’re on slow/metered connections and have disabled background downloads to save money or bandwidth.
• Assistive technologies they require either lag behind in updates or aren’t supported in newer versions entirely.
• They’ve purposely disabled auto-updates for reasons of security.
• Interventions or censorship prevent them from reaching update servers.
• Their device doesn’t have the necessary storage capacity to perform an update.
• A device in a shared space like a library or school which doesn’t have the budget or capability to keep devices up-to-date.
• They’re running a portable browser from a USB or the like, which must be manually updated.
• They rely on a proxy-based browser which is outdated on the server-side.

You don’t need to support every browser version in perpetuity, but you should take a moment to consider that there are plenty of legitimate reasons folks won’t have the latest and greatest.

If you can, embrace progressive enhancement and graceful degradation.

A good way to start the day is by checking for major npm pwnage.

I like to think of myself less like a human and more like a future case study.

Sometimes I feel useless, but then I recall the experience of trying to use npm’s search functionality and suddenly feel extraordinarily capable.

I’m proud to announce that after spending the better part of half an hour painstakingly tweaking and refining an animation, I’ve decided I don’t like it and that I’m deleting it.

All the tech CEOs went from ‘There is no AI bubble’ to ‘When the AI bubble pops’ real quick.

Non-technical folk will (probably) bungle your email on a custom domain.

Emails are centralised to a few major platforms such as Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud. When you have an address straying from these usuals, people oftentimes get confused, which leads to bouncing emails.

TLDs straying from the familiar .com, .net, and .org are a common cause of issues. Frequently, people add one of the TLDs they’re familiar with after the actual address. For example, an email on my domain vale.rocks might be example@vale.rocks, but some people try to send an email to example@vale.rocks.com.

Another common issue is people assuming all emails end in gmail.com, which leads to addresses such as example@vale.rocks@gmail.com or example@vale.rocks.gmail.com.

You must ensure you know your audience. This probably won’t be an issue with a more technical crowd and is less so when people needn’t manually enter an address and it is instead filled for them, but you should be wary when targeting a casual group.

Don’t lose leads and business because of your snazzy email address.

Sometimes weekends on Bluesky are really dead. Other times, they are extremely active.

I’m yet to discern any patterns or otherwise figure out the cause.

Not every day you get a physical e-mail from the United States.

These rad stickers landed in my letterbox courtesy of one Mat ‘Wilto’ Marquis.

Everyone says OKLCH like ‘Okay El Sea Haich’, yeah?

Popped over to SpaceHey to check out discussion of an early 2000s indie musical project, and I loaded a Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand-themed group where the first account I saw had a profile picture with the text ‘this man ate my son’ below a photo of David Dixon’s Ford Prefect.

The web isn’t all bad.

My vacuum cleaner broke, so I got a new Next.js branded one which I can be certain will continue to suck for years to come.

One of my photographs has apparently been used in this AOL article about protecting your garden from frost.

https://www.aol.com/articles/protect-garden-frost-too-tips-173139152.html

I’ve obviously peaked. Things can only go downhill from here.

The Attention Is All You Need Paper and Its Consequences

Something I observed while manually reviewing every single site on personalsit.es:

• Websites built with Next.js very rarely have RSS feeds.
• Websites built with React sometimes have RSS feeds.
• Completely static sites almost always have RSS feeds.

Some people are told that they’re a ‘sight for sore eyes’. I’m often told I’m a ‘sore sight for eyes’.

Most AI integrations are like having a backseat driver you didn’t invite into your car.

The chat platform Stoat already has a wordmark, but no logo. Here are some of the concept designs I put together:

Zohran Mamdani is a rare case of a politician not simply being the least bad but instead being genuinely good. I am so glad to see him triumph.