Micros

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.

Was helping out a (seemingly) nice client in her 80s who was locked out of her Facebook, and based on the vibe I got from her (and her very vocal support of Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson), I’m almost certain her account was suspended due to spewing hate speech and harassing people. 😬

There’s simply too much good human made stuff out there to justify wasting time consuming AI made slop.

Shaving all the hair off your head can be great but is an ordeal. I don’t own clippers or an electric razor, so this is how I do the task. It takes me roughly three hours from a full head of long hair to bald, including prep and clean-up.

I’m usually beginning from over a year of unmanaged hair growth, so an important first step is to remove the bulk existing hair. I do this as part of a multi-part process. First, I clean my hair and wait for it to dry, then separate it out into strands and perform many plaits, holding it together with rubber bands. Then, I use some scissors to cut it as close to the scalp as possible. This process keeps the hair orderly, so it can be used for alternative purposes in the future, such as wigs or paintbrushes.

I then follow up very carefully with scissors, getting as close to my scalp as possible and removing as much hair as I can. Once I’ve gotten it as close as I feasibly can with scissors, I move on to using a razor. I always ensure I have enough razors on hand, because going shopping for more with uneven clumps of hair stuck to your head isn’t a great look. I shave my head with the same process I use when dealing with any other bodily hair I shave, though it is worth considering that hair on the top of one’s head is usually much finer than that found elsewhere. For a first shave, going with the grain to minimise irritation is certainly the best choice, even if it doesn’t let you get quite as close of a shave.

The back and top of the head are a particular pain to shave, so I use a second mirror (often just my phone with the front camera). Holding a razor in one hand and mirror in the other, I look at the reflection of my mirror in the main bathroom mirror to see the back of my head. I take particular note of the hair atop and around my ears and at the back of the head, especially between the upper portions of the trapezius muscles, which forms a nook that can be hard to access. The crown can also be difficult, as it is hard to track the grain of the hair.

I pay particular attention to these parts and avoid going over the same place too many times in succession to avoid irritation. The head is a big place, so don’t focus on the same small part for too long – give it a break for a little while and address another part, coming back to the previous bit later.

After shaving, I have a shower and then touch up any remaining bits before another quick wash. Then I apply whatever creams/lotions I have at hand to sooth my scalp. Shaving one’s head isn’t too tricky but is an effort. You must of course ensure your hair does not end up down the drains, causing a clog.

There is a point during the process of my annual haircut down to bald where I survey the sink with a certain trepidation.

I’m gonna have to update my profile picture, aren’t I?

Google Search Central made a post on LinkedIn, and it has the most genuine human-written comments I’ve ever seen on the platform. It is just a bunch of SEO experts saying variants of: ‘We’re fucked’, ‘Our careers are ruined’, ‘All our traffic is gone’, ‘Google wants us dead’.

:(

Also, oh, okay. Thanks Google. I was wondering where all the traffic went.

2026’s Google I/O (Google’s annual developer conference) has been a disaster for the web. The conference-driven development’s forcing through of the Prompt API, a set of Modern Web Guidance skills for AI systems to use that are already showing major accessibility shortcomings, and a whole ton more AI-spangled sloppery, is rushed and unwelcome.

I think the most damaging announcement is the changes coming to Google Search. Rather than a list of relevant links, a search on Google will be more aggressively prioritising the LLM-generated summary, now complete with vibecoded tables, graphs, and interactive elements.

There has until now been a social contract. Website owners let Google scrape their sites and present them in Google Search, and, in exchange, Google Search sends traffic back to those sites. Google wins via adverts on the search page, and sites win due to however they monetise traffic. More largely, everyone wins because there is a financial incentive to create and produce new content.

However, Google killing their side of the contract ends this. If Google only takes and never gives, then sites cannot profit. What is the incentive to publish if the only outcome is feeding Google’s AI with no return? What sources will LLMs have to pull from if all the sources are defunct? How far will Google go folding adverts into their AI output?

I can see the huge short-term gain for Google, but I see no long-term path – not even an unsustainable one. This feels like the end, but of exactly what I’m uncertain.

All of my peers (bar the ones that work at Google) are shattered in a way I’ve never seen before. I don’t know where we go from here.

I need write some words coherently proper please. Grant me strength to word put together into sentence so can read well and goodly. Brain all frazzled can’t word readable way thank you. Oh dear. Too many language.

EmDash caught my eye when Cloudflare released it at the start of April. April 1st, no less. It is a simple content management system built upon the lovely Astro web framework. EmDash looked like a solution to some problems I encounter, those being that WordPress is too much to manage for simpler sites and is too complex for less computer-adept folks to manage. I love static sites, but a CMS is a must for people without much tech experience. A bespoke static site is also a much greater undertaking than an off-the-shelf offering.

WordPress and I get on as well as any developer can get on with WordPress. We might not be the best of friends, but we are amicable. However, I sometimes yearn for something simpler I can plonk in front of an older or less technically inclined client. Something that is easy to host, easy for people to update content on, and looks decent out of the box is the dream. Sure enough, someone who could barely manage their Mac managed to figure out EmDash. Hooray!

Unfortunately, EmDash isn’t ready for prime time. It is primarily AI authored, and that shows. Some UI elements overflow off the screen. Many features lack documentation or have documentation that is ambiguous in a way that only an LLM can manage. ‘Failed to publish. Failed to publish content.’ is an error as frustrating as it is vague. It also isn’t triggered by some unknown edge case, as I can replicate it with the CMS’ online playground.

There is no polish here, and it is an exercise in frustration. I can’t in good faith put EmDash in front of a client. EmDash will probably improve (it is only a month and a half old), but it isn’t fit for use yet. Far from it.

Playing around with training a small language model exclusively on my own writing and work again.

I love this output: https://www.com/wiki/posts

It is trained on links and the presence of URL parts like ‘https’, ‘www’, ‘com’, and ‘wiki’ (from Wikipedia) in association but doesn’t quite manage to put them together correctly. This mode of failure really represents how language models work under the hood.

They say you mustn’t Log Off.

A far from perfect little table, but one that hopefully gets the point across and works as a reference. Scripts ≠ languages, with many scripts being used by many languages.

Trying to kill WordPress is like trying to kill a god. You will be made an example of, humiliated, and quite possibly smote by powers otherwise unknown in this realm.

I love dark mode, but it mustn’t be the only option. For a lot of people, white text upon a dark background is illegible.

Common eye conditions like astigmatism, myopia, and presbyopia can make content look foggy, become hard to focus on, and cause eye strain.

The above effect is especially exacerbated by strong contrast, like pure white on pure black. However, different conditions benefit from different levels of contrast. For example, people with conditions such as cataracts, aniridia, and achromatopsia can benefit from low-contrast visuals. The prefers-contrast CSS media feature is fantastic for tailoring to your user’s needs.