The first time I saw Michelangelo’s David in person, I wept. Never in my life have I witnessed a more beautiful piece of content. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Museum patrons all around me were looking up from their phones to admire David as well. Despite it being legacy content, David was so scrollstoppingly captivating that it generated stronger engagement than TikTok and Instagram combined, despite those platforms offering fresher, more personally relevant content.
I stopped by a Filipino/Hawaiian (mostly filipino) restaurant/bar that was recommended to me a few months ago by someone I met at an AANHPI event. One of my friends that was eating with us had gone many times before and said they enjoyed the menu. We looked up the menu before heading over. As a Filipino-American I always get curious about Filipino restaurants because a lot of our dishes are family-style/comfort food, so it’s always interesting to see what foods will be on the menu. To our…
Last edited 2 minutes ago. Considering how much anything costs right now (bc of AI, blockchain, mining, or whatever the fuck is going on in tech), I have come to a point in life where I realized I can afford nothing. Add to that the fact that my main computer died and I'm struggling financially... well, what's a girl to do? Use older tech and forget about the modern world is the answer, apparently. GamingMy old ass laptop can barely handle multiple tabs open on a browser, let alone a modern…
This time it’ll be different, they say. This time it’ll be about the people, they say. This time it’ll be a change for the better, they say. This time the system won’t win, they say. Colour me apathetic. Another PM we didn’t vote for —I know, we vote for the party not the person— in a system that feels increasingly broken. But what choice do we have? It’s this or the right wing. Right? Thanks for reading and keeping RSS alive. Visit my site for more.
In the last year, I've been through over a dozen cities and used public transport in all of them. It is wild just how confusing and complex buying a ticket can be. While some cities obviously take a user-centred approach to ticketing, others appear to take a Kafkaesque delight in a bureaucratic maze of zones, apps, and intricate restrictions. One of the seminal texts in computer systems design is "Don't Make Me Think". Every time a service forces the user into making a decision, it is placing a…
Earlier this month, I talked about a rotation button in photos that behaved really nicely in iOS, and not so great on the Nothing Phone. Here’s a story of a similar fumble iOS once made that might bring the point home even more. The calculator app has been preinstalled on iPhones ever since their debut in 2007. For the longest time it hasn’t been anything more than a standard four-function calculator with a decades-old feature set. If you’re not careful, however, you can mess up even that. Ten…
A retro-styled wristwatch, a Timex T-80 Digital watch, Pelikan, Waterman and Conklin Fountain Pens. I've posited elsewhere that I have become something of a “techno curmudgeon” — that is someone who has serious reservations about technology, and therefore has adopted older technology. And yes, that is one possible connection between Fountain Pens and Wristwatches, but there is something else that I feel connects them, and other things that I am interested in. So, I am not certain if this will…
I found grumpywelshman this week, via https://bubbles.town – a good place to go to read somewhat interesting things. His stuff is very funny, an acidic takedown of the internet as we find it, the side hustle EARN $10,000 A WEEK WITH THIS FREE METHOD (costs $499), the algo, all of that. I recommend it all, good stuff, worth subscribing to. This piece – we are all rankers now: or why the internet has turned to shit – has some stuff in it which made me think a bit more about a thought at the back…
Yesterday, omg.lol founder (and overall wonderful person) Adam Newbold posted a guide titled "Hardcore IndieWeb", where he went over how anybody can start their own fully independent website for only $0.01 USD per day thanks to the hosting solution NearlyFreeSpeech provides. (The guide doesn't even touch IndieWeb Standards which are commonly pointed to when this topic is brought up, which I personally appreciate it.) I think a lot of people see a tension between making things accessible and…
Camera focus adventures with a super rad insect There's this metal corrugated awning that covers a patio in my backyard right outside the living room window; birds love it because it catches a bunch of the oak tree's acorns and like, win/win - I look out a window and there's a goddamn buffet for creatures both avian and squirrel-adjacent that I can regularly photograph. Like, a year ago we had this wild wind storm while it was below freezing and our oak tree took a BIT of a beating (it was…
Throughout my life, I've ran across three movies that I just could not understand the appeal of: The Big Lebowski The Lord of the Rings Franchise Blade Runner Now, normally it wouldn't be a big deal if I didn't like a movie, but all three of these films seemed like something I should like. I always felt like I was just missing something. So, over the past few decades, I've revisited these films over and over again... waiting for something to click. The Big Lebowski clicked first. It took three…
Bridge heading into the smokey landscape. License: CC-0 I read Brennan Kenneth Brown's What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?, and found myself writing a lengthy response. But, after I wrote my response I reread Brennan's article and found myself in a bit of a quandary. I found myself asking a simple question: was it intentional that he presented both arguments and counterarguments in his piece? That seemed to have a simple answer: yes. Any good piece of writing should undertake to…
After seeing Ian’s plea to Don’t Forget to Share the Posts You Love recently, I decided to get off my arse and do something I've been meaning to since I resurrected this blog back in October. I’ve had a few links I wanted to share, but not necessarily devote an entire blog post to. So here’s a little collection of them all together. I'm going to start with Terence's post This Blog is Written in en-GB because it resonated with me. I always write in my natural language and yes that means I often…
I love reading. I caught the bug as a middle-schooler when I got caught skipping school, and as punishment, I had to read The Chronicles of Amber and do a book report about it. Even today, opening a book and fanning the pages to get the paper smell activates very fond memories and emotions. I remember a time before e-readers came out. I always thought reading on one seemed very futuristic. In military sci-fi books, characters are reading on their data pads, and reading on an e-reader makes me…
The big story is Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Florida on charges of rape and sex trafficking: LONDON – Influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been arrested in Miami after British authorities issued 38 new charges against them, including allegations of rape and sex trafficking. The United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) released a statement saying that the two men had been arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service on Saturday. The CPS said it was “seeking…
A yearbook page from the 1970s rarely looks like a fashion statement at first glance, yet look closer and the hemlines tell their own story. Row after row of young women pose in skirts several inches above the knee, a length that had been considered scandalous barely a decade earlier. These photographs, tucked away in […]
Reading through an RSS feed can dull the experience of enjoying a blog's unique style—try visiting the site directly for the full effect.
The latest anti-feature from Automattic—now infecting Gravatar. Photo by: Unattributed, License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. Happily Imperfect posted Bye bye Gravatar a short while ago, and I have to say, I've had a similar thought about deleting my account on there as well. My feelings towards WordPress and Automattic started changing some time ago, back when they introduced the Gutenberg editor. Ever since this “improvement” it's been a downhill slide…
I finished Mythos (by Stephen Fry) last week, and came away with a new found fascination for ancient gods. I started the next book from the Forgotten Realms humble bundle: The Wyvern's Spur. So far, so good. Gaming wise I had a mixed week. I can tell my attention span is shot once again since I played a little bit of no less than 5 games. I think Ni No Kuni is officially on the backlog again... I'm not really sure why I keep thinking now is a good time for such in-depth games. :( I am however…
Why is this an “app”? This summer, the kids’ performing arts school are singing and dancing in a show at Disneyland. We’re all very excited, but my excitement, at least, was muted a little when I was told to install the “Travelbound” app in order to get access to the itinerary, travel arrangements, and accommodation details. Fuck that noise. This should have been a webpage. Why do you want me to install a(nother) shitty app just to tell me something that could have been a (smaller, faster, more…
I’ve been using Photoshop since the mid-90s. First at school, with Photoshop 3, then through work. I bought my first boxed copy of CS2 in 2005, then upgraded to CS5 in 2010. I subscribed to Photoshop Creative Cloud on day one. Today, I uninstalled it. I hope I never have to use Adobe software ever again. Photoshop used to be a joy to use. Whenever I got access to an upgraded version, I’d always have fun exploring the new features. I got really good at using it. When Adobe launched the Creative…
I’ve heard tuna described as “chicken of the sea”, but why have I never heard anyone refer to pistachios as “clam of the tree”?
Wolf looking directly into a camera at close proximity. There is a bit of an issue I have noticed lately: websites actively blocking Reading Mode in Firefox, and derivative web browsers. I was stunned to find out (just a minute ago) that Reading Mode doesn't appear to be a default feature in Chromium, but instead an add-on. So, I don't know if this is an issue for Chrome based browsers. This is getting frustratingly annoying for me. Why? There are multiple reasons that Reading Mode is a…
I'm ready to grudgingly accept that the absolute market saturation of mattress retailers in America over the past 10 years isn't tied to money laundering, even though it's one of the few internet conspiracies that kind of, sort of, might possibly be true. I bought a mattress yesterday. First time in my life. I've lived on this planet 61 years without having that experience. All I can say after nearly selling a kidney to buy a common household item is DAMN. The one we bought cost more than every…
I'm somebody who writes a lot—half a million words and 200 blog posts in the past 8 months. I'm also someone with an unrelenting curiosity to better understand our world. Beyond that, I also graduated with a degree in English literature with honours, with a 3.8 GPA. So, it should be no surprise I've done extensive research on how best to do research, which resulted in me diving into the world of personal knowledge management systems. These are the systems and methods of keeping track and…
I just miss doing art. Don’t you? Naomi Kritzer, Better Living Through Algorithms i bought myself some presents. i like them. they're nice.
To summarize my answer to Antonio's post: good! I don't read posts in my feed reader to look at styles, I do it to consume content - to read their thoughts. I use my feed reader because it's configured exactly how I like it. The colors are tweaked to a palette that's pleasing to my eyes and doesn't cause strain. The font family, font size, and other elements are customizable and configured exactly how I like them. I can't tell you how many times I've opened a great blog post and struggled to…
This post contains dozens of images, and is best in your browser.If you’re not in the market to buy a camera or read about cameras you can skip this post. If you want some more general photography thoughts, there’s On the Usefulness of PhotographyFixed-lens cameras are simple objects for producing art. As the name suggests you cannot change the lens and, for the three title camera lines, you cannot zoom. There’s less fretting about what lenses to buy or to take with you, and constraints can…
This week note covers the week of 13th–20th July. Aliens vs. The Fish Since I’m writing this week note so late, I’ll throw in an extra day for free. Last week was the week of birthdays. Both my wife and our now 4yo A had their birthdays, and the whole week was spent in celebrations. For A’s birthday, we went to the Aquarium Paradise, probably the largest aquarium in Bengaluru. A had a lot of fun looking at all the fish and other sea creatures. The photo above is from the aquarium, which had a…
I just read that a couple of days ago Pika announced the ability to add custom code. You can’t do too much, but a few things are possible. So today with a little bending of some (coding) rules, I was able to add the Bubbles upvote widget to my posts. The Bubbles embed widget is this… <div class="bubbles-vote"></div> <script src="https://bubbles.town/vote.js" defer></script> But there is no way to add the bubbles-vote div/class within Pika. So I had to change the Bubbles script and utilise a…
