• Response to Jan-Lukas Else

    Not only Telegram implements new features, I spontaneously had an idea and a bit of programming desire. As an optional feature GoBlog now offers β€œreactions”. I don’t think I need to explain this feature, just try it out on this post. πŸ˜‰
    Oohhh, I like this reactions idea. I may need to do something similar in Tanzawa πŸ˜€.
  • Response to How can I improve the typography on my site?

    I have been thinking about the typography on my website for months in the back of my head. Every so often, I ask myself: is the typography as good as it can be? First, I wonder whether I should start using a custom font. If I recall correctly, I am using a web-safe default font right now. Maybe a new font will add more character to my blog?
    You may be interested in On Web Typography (their other books on design are really good, too).

    Your typography for each element should help that element fit its purpose on that given page. i.e. you wouldn't want bold 36px text for your blog posts. Your font sizes for blog post text will probably be different between the main page and the blog post detail page because the purpose of the text is different. Serif fonts, that is fonts with caps on the end are easier to read for longer texts. Give it room to breathe.

    You can also use different colors of text to increase/reduce emphasis of a particular element. I use thisΒ  technique quite a bit in Tanzawa. For example the page I'm using to write this reply looks like this:

    Smaller fonts in light gray de-emphasis less important bits


    Typography and design are deep subjects and are, in many ways, exactly like programming in the following sense: "Give a man a program, frustrate him for a day. Teach a man to pgoram, frustrate him for a lifetime."
  • Response to Weeknotes #113

    I’ve got a spreadsheet where I track the Apple products I own and one of the columns in it is the per day cost. My current Mac (a 13” MacBook Pro I purchased in 2017) remains the most expensive Mac I’ve bought measured on that basis and will remain so until early July. If I want to wait until it’s cost me, say, Β₯100 a day, Soulver is telling me I need to wait until 5 December 2024 (!).
    You got me curious about my mid-2014 Macbook Pro. I bought it Nov 21st, 2014. That's 7 years 3 months, and 22 days ago. Or 2671 days. Cost was $2699 (before tax), which puts me right at $1.01 per day. 4 more weeks and I'll hit that dollar / day mark!

    Really want to replace it with something new. But will wait until I feel peace about buying another Mac...having everything on 1 chip (but this also hasn't been a problem on my current machine, so maybe the problem is moot).
  • Response to Make Free Stuff

    Resource Scarcity doesn’t make sense on the web. Artificially creating it here serves no other purpose than to charge money for things that could easily have been free for all.
    ...
    This is a world where anything can easily be copied a million times and distributed around the globe in a second. If that were possible in the real world, we’d call it Utopia.
    This post articulates exactly what I've been thinking about the web for a while so much better than I could. Make free stuff! The web is still for everyone. ✊
  • Response to Not that smart

    It’s increasingly difficult to buy a non-smart TV, so your only options are to never connect it to the internet (impossible on a Samsung), use router level DNS blocking (until the TVs start using encrypted DNS) or connect something like an Apple TV and use that exclusively.
    They still sell "dumb" TVs, but they no longer call them TV. They call them "Commercial Displays". Wish I had known that when I was in the market for a TV 5 or so years ago.

    I took the opportunity from a router upgrade which caused my Panasonic TV to be unable to connect to the WiFi any longer to start relying entirely on my AppleTV for Netflix etc... It's a much better experience except inputting Japanese. I have to use my iPhone for that instead of being able to switch keyboards in the native FirefoxOS.
  • Bookmark of Can Matt Mullenweg save the internet?

    He's turning Automattic into a different kind of tech giant. But can he take on the trillion-dollar walled gardens and give the internet back to the people?
    While I agree with Matt that decentralization and individual ownership are central to a Web3, the crypto/blockchain aspect of it is a technological farce.

    Following the principles of IndieWeb on your own domain will allow you, today, to own all of your data and to interact with other people absent of any intermediary service and without melting the arctic.

    A major motivator for building Tanzawa was individual ownership. It's not enough to have your data, but have it stuck in a in serialzied blob in a Wordpress plugin data column somewhere. It's too difficult and cumbersome to reuse. It must be in a proper relational schema. So far the fruits of my indieweb journey have allowed me to not only own my data, but to actually use it toΒ  build upon it. Both trips and maps wouldn't have been possible without Tanzawa.
  • Response to Announcing indieweb-utils

    After some thought, I decided to build indieweb-utils, a Python library with building blocks that will assist developers in building IndieWeb applications.
    indieweb-utils looks like a lovely library to help with some of the faff of html parsing for the IndieWeb.

    I originally planned to do something similar using Tanzawa Indieweb module for Django-Indieweb stuff, but now I'm less convinced that'd be useful outside of the Tanzawa context.Β 

    I'd love to see the Python/Indieweb "consolidate" a bit on a single library so we aren't duplicating effort. I'll have to open some PRs. Great work, James!
  • Response to Muffy Van Moof’s Maiden Voyage

    I went to the dentist and when I returned to the bicycle rack I discovered my broken lock laying on the pavement. No bike. I looked at the security guard standing by the door, pointed, and gave him a look. He said, β€œOh. That was your bike?”
    ...
    But San Francisco has lots of hills and the difference between a fast easy bike ride vs. an arduous uphill journey is rendered moot with just a teeny tiny bit of extra oomph.
    There's heaps of hills in Yokohama, too, and the extra oomph makes all the difference. It's so much easier to navigate and park our bikes than a car. And with the assist even with 15kg of kid on the back,  the steepest hills remain surmountable without breaking a sweat. This machine fights climate change 🚲.

    Also so nice to see the photos, of just how common e-bikes are becoming in US. And those bike lanes and some proper infrastructure. 😍
  • Response to GNUstep: Open-source, Object-oriented, Cross-platform Development Environment

    GNUstep is a mature Framework, suited both for advanced GUI desktop applications as well as server applications. The framework closely follows Apple's Cocoa APIs and is portable to a variety of platforms and architectures.
    Reading this comment really brought back memories of being an Objective-C developer in the early MacOS X days. One thing I lamented in those days was that whatever I wrote was stuck on the Mac and GNUstep gave me hope that it didn't need to be.

    High school me used to think how cool Objective-C and Cocoa was and how it was the future. And thanks to the iPhone, for a long time I was right.

    But the web won the war for Cross-platform development and most days I'm glad it did.
  • Response to Advent of Bloggers 2021

    For the last week or two, I have been thinking whether there is a December blogging series I could take on, similar to how Advent of Code publishes a new coding challenge every day throughout Advent.
    …
    From now up until December 24th, I hope to write a blog post every day about a blog that I find interesting.
    Fantastic idea. Looking forward to the Advent James!
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