Firehose

I wanted to see how the times Bluesky posts are published affect the popularity of those posts, so I put together a super quick and dirty little tool to do that.

https://tools.vale.rocks/bluesky-posting-analyser

My findings lined up with my hypothesis that posts around American mornings and evenings merit the most activity.

I was surprised to see that weekends are popular within technical communities, as I expected engagement to drop off when people aren’t ‘working’.

HTML. CSS. JavaScript.

Long ago, the three nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when The Frameworks attacked.

If you’re on Twitter/X, I think less of you.
If you’re on Substack, I think less of you.
If you’re on Facebook/Instagram, I think less of you.

To remain on them knowing the damage they are doing and facilitating is to comply with and endorse their actions. There isn’t an excuse for staying.

A local developer has been found dead. Upon interviewing their family, we discovered they’ve repeatedly been found typing alone in an empty IRC chat at odd hours of the morning regarding creating a ‘revolutionary new technology’. Police believe they were attempting to reinvent the literal wheel.

I always feel dirty talking about type. Serifs with lovely ball terminals. Soft shoulders. Attractive curves. Deep inktrap crotches. Beautiful eyes. Broad arms. Long, slender legs. Tittles.

(I mean, good typography is sexy – even ignoring the trade diction.)

If you ask for help, and someone decides to help you, and they ask you clarifying questions so they can provide that help, don’t fight them!

Don’t question their questions and push back; they’re asking for a reason.

As developers, our goal is to build something to be used. Part of this is ensuring it can be used by anyone and caters to everyone.

Accessibility isn’t a separate concept or goal. Making something more accessible for some people makes it better for all people, and that is our greater intent.

Remember when we used to talk about new technologies and say, ‘This is the worst it’ll ever be’?

I miss those days.

To avoid leaving heat stains on my wooden desk, I’ve been using my 3D printer as a coaster for my cups of tea.

An unplanned benefit is that the heated bed also works to keep them warm if I’m so inclined.

A lot of people fork my projects on GitHub and then do nothing with them. I was curious as to why so many do this, so I’ve asked some of them, and they all say it is for the sake of archival.

I’m not quite sure how effective of a strategy that is…

There is a tendency for the last 1% to take the longest time.

I wonder if that long last 1% will be before AGI, or ASI, or both.

It scares me how many people reply to no-reply email addresses. So many responses to sign-up confirmations and password resets with messages like ‘OK’ or ‘thank you’.

Do they think there is a human responding? Or do they just think it prudent to thank the automated machines? I’m perplexed.

YOLO (You Only Live Once) is just as much justification not to do something as it is to do something, yet it is rarely treated as such.

Tangentially, you don’t hear YOLO as a phrase very often anymore. Maybe those YOLOers with gung-ho inclinations wiped themselves out and took the phrase with them?

A good plot doesn’t thicken – it coagulates.

Google Search Console giveth, and Google Search Console taketh away.

For a fleeting 12 minutes I had it all.

Note to self:
Never have testing and prod open on the same machine. You will get confused no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time.

One of the most impactful moments of my life occurred while I was whistling. My friend, unintentionally packing his words with the psychological impact of a sawn-off shotgun at point-blank range, said, ‘You know you’re supposed to change notes, yeah?’

Years later I’m still not sure I’ve recovered.

I found a website on the ground and completely inaccessible. Next to it? A bottle of ARIA. It must have taken too much and overdosed.

Kids, always use ARIA in moderation, and never ARIA on an empty semantic.

I’ve been thinking about loanwords in language. How long have we got these words on loan for? Will they be taken back? What is the fee to buy them outright? Who should I talk to about this?

I just wanted to let everyone know that . is the root of all TLDs.

This means that, for example, vale.rocks. is a valid domain. vale is a child of rocks, which is itself a child of ..

You are now burdened with this knowledge.

Nice to see Figma are building tools for web divelopment now. They’re really spanning that gap.

I’d like to thank the HTTP ‘referer’ header field for permanently ruining my ability to correctly spell the word ‘referrer’.

Elle just added a blog feed to her website and included me in it, along with a little pixel me!

I love the entire feed reader! Her attention to detail with having all the buttons work and adding the ability to save drawings is fantastic! Her site is a treasure trove of little interactive gadgets and gizmos that is well worth checking out!

I had the pleasure of ‘beta testing’ this visual essay a little while ago. It is a right and proper banger, as all of Sam Rose’s work is.

Make sure to click on anything and everything!

https://samwho.dev/reservoir-sampling/

I am evidently powerless to resist the alluring temptation of chocolate-coated coffee beans.

I often have issues with sharing cross-origin resources, which results in me throwing my computer out a window.

This is referred to as CORS and effect.

I hate the argument, ‘Humans are bad at X, so LLMs must be really bad at X.’

There are flaws with LLMs, but this is a poor argument. They are fundamentally different to humans, and just because we fumble at something doesn’t mean LLMs do (and vice versa).