Firehose

This is everything, all in one place, coming ’atcha!

This firehose contains a record of all my micro posts, articles, photography, and other web doings. If you’d like to subscribe to feeds to stay up-to-date with things, then you can do so via my syndication page.

One of the most horrific codebases I’ve ever seen is one in which all the styling was done using Tailwind’s @apply. No utility classes in markup, just CSS files full of selectors and @apply. They had inexplicably reinvented CSS in Tailwind, and it struck fear into my very heart.

Anyone had any luck getting past the final boss in CSS Backgrounds Module Level 4? I can never seem to dodge that final attack. I’ve been stuck on the level for months.

Look at this little woollen version of me made by my talented grandmother! Complete with unicycle and computer! What a proper-looking little fella!

A small knitted person with blonde hair, pink skin, a smiling face, a purple shirt, and khaki pants. Affixed onto the front are paper illustrations of a computer and a unicycle.

Haven’t got an Apple device but need to test your site in Safari? Go into the Apple Store and test on their demo computers.

They probably won’t kick you out. It usually takes them a while to catch on.

We used to be Explorers of the Internet. We used to be Navigators of the Netscape – Browsers, Communicators. We admired the Moasic. It was the WorldWideWeb. We admired the Nexus. What happened?

Was at the doctor’s, and a trap remix of Frère Jacques was playing on loop. Simultaneously, Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping was playing from another speaker.

Needless to say, I engaged in some ethical hacking by use of my Flipper Zero.

Event

New Year

The arrival of a new year.

Taking a break from my writing to go to a content aggregation site to enjoy somebody else’s writing, only to find my own writing staring back at me there.

There are worse problems to have, but I’m not cut out for ‘success’.

Instead of measuring time with standard units, I’ve taken to using CVEs as my measure.

Say not: ‘I went to the shops last week.’

Instead say: ‘I went to the shops 879 CVEs ago.’

I love when you say something in a forum, someone replies with a retort that entirely shuts you down, and then a random keyboard cowboy swings by the thread and says, ‘Actually, they meant X’, saving your skin.

Why yes, that far better thought-out argument is certainly the one I was trying to make.

Hacker News commenter: Couldn’t even read the article because the website wouldn’t load in my copy of Internet Explorer 5 on Windows ME. The modern web sucks.

I have a rouge instance of NVDA running somewhere because I continue to hear the dulcet tones of Windows OneCore whispering little somethings to me.

You Can't Opt-Out of Accessibility

Shiny exclusion all the way down.

A rant of frustration about accessibility being a undervalued yet critically important part of building digital experiences. Complaining about the industry's apathy and the true human cost of neglecting accessibility.

https://vale.rocks/posts/accessibility-importance

Knocking off for the day after adding some ‘pop’ with body {filter: saturate(10); } and making the app ‘more dynamic and interactive’ by slapping * { transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out; } into the stylesheet.

I read a very fascinating post on building a tiny Markov model based on one’s own writing. Naturally, I gave it a whirl on the currently ~120,000-word corpus of Vale.Rocks. Reproduced below are some of the slightly more coherent, interesting outputs that I’ve cherry-picked.

Patches are also frequent comparisons to previous hype-driven drivel such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript where possible but often find myself engaging with a damp paper towel once I got my biomagnet installed, and for the sake of preserving my appearance or structure. My body without me is a child of .. You are now well estranged by time, and a more varied, refined equipment system. It is so much better. The new flexibility allotted by our full redesign and development allows for individuals to customise their editor to define how prose should display.

YOLO (You Only Live Once) is just writing, perhaps supplemented with additional JavaScript-based functionality considered progressive enhancement, but that is iffy.

Three outputs from a command which instructs the text to begin with ‘The web is’ (./mvs 2 100 'The web is' < vale_corpus.txt):

The web is my attempt to offer both—a unique, accessible experience. Perhaps the largest and most advisories urge against its usage. Exploitation of the Google search results page for the first few hours later with an external interface where I feel like a library or school which doesn’t have the technology.

The web is dominated by Chrome, and something tangible to walk away with and without variance. If there ever is a physical arcade rail shooter with a range of national organisations. We worked on the use of AV1. AV1 as a unicycle contributes to people’s willingness to manually implement and hard-code every single thing. Thus, I moved away from giving any advice at all. Given this is a case of Malaysia, many remote areas were going to figure out the specifics of what you’re writing, you’re limiting your reach and hurting your growth. Yet another step up from a moving

The web is dominated by Chrome, and something needs to do so. I figured I’d do something on the Xbox, I wouldn’t sweat it if you use Samsung Internet? Person: I’m not a huge interest in smoking, which is lovely for debugging and visualising exactly how much this game is pushing forward while minimising miscommunication. You’re going to be carefully considered and future-proofed – especially not mother monkeys with infants. This snake’s name is George, and while I did little circles. While most kids were wishing us a compliment, which was unfortunately let down somewhat by the very comprehensive IRDB.

Video

Magnetic Viewing Film with xG3 v2 Implant

Using magnetic viewing film to showcase the fields produced by some loose magnets and my subdermally implanted xG3 v2 bio-magnet.

Can’t wait till one of those accessibility overlay providers decides to pivot to eugenics in their ever continuing effort to ‘fix’ accessibility without actually helping disabled people.

Had an absolutely fantastic time unicycling in the Perth Christmas Pageant with the WA Historical Cycle Club yesterday evening.

It was tricky riding so slow and in the presence of so many penny-farthings, but we made it through successfully, and everyone had a good time.

I high-fived so many people. I did feel a tad terrible when there were kids I missed or couldn’t quite reach down to, though. Lots and lots of tiny hands. The crowd rather liked it when I did little circles.

While most kids were wishing us a merry Christmas, the sheer number of children saying 6-7 complete with hand gestures was impressive – like some sort of hive mind.

I was absolutely knackered afterwards but posed for a few photos and such. Had an absolute blast and got to see some TV personalities. A highlight was ex-Wiggle Emma Watkins (Emma Memma) throwing us a compliment, which was lovely.

I don’t wish to count my chickens before they hatch, but it seems a long while since I’ve seen someone take direct issue with small caps on the web.

Dare I say web surfers have grown tolerant?

Whenever I see a person who calls themself a ‘web developer’ slap together a janky portfolio site in a site builder with poor accessibility, I’m forced to question their capability.

How can you be trusted to develop websites when the website you built to show you can build websites is poorly built?

My life’s prime directive is to avoid ending up with a Wikipedia page written about me which contains a ‘Controversies’ section.

Frequently Asked Unicycling Questions

No, I did not lose the other wheel.

Answers to questions frequently asked of me as unicyclist, including whether it is dangerous, the various parts, how hard a unicycle is to ride and learn, and assorted answers to many other questions.

https://vale.rocks/posts/unicycle-faq

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.