Not Marching · My inbox is full of reminders that this Friday, September 15, 2023, is the Global Climate Strike; marches and demonstrations are happening everywhere (here in Vancouver, starting 1PM Pacific at City Hall). But I’m not going. I’m too angry, angry enough to be stupid ...
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Outer Átl’ḵa7tsem · On most maps is its colonial name: Howe Sound. It’s a triangular body of water northwest of Vancouver, its longest side about 40km, scattered with islands. Here’s a map. The Sound and its islands are mostly named after 19th-century British naval officers, which in 2023 I find loathsome. It’s time to lose the dead limeys and revive the Indigenous names. The area was peopled by the Squamish; they used more than one name, but these days “Átl’ḵa7tsem” seems to be what people (and officials) are using. It may be hard to spell but it’s not hard to say ...
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Mastodon Status Check · My social-media life has been Fediverse-first since last November. I stick my head into Bluesky and Threads regularly, but no longer bother visiting Twitter/X much. This piece takes a close look at Mastodon-land as things stand in late summer 2023. What’s working, what’s not, what are the alternatives? ...
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Unicode Scalar Value · Suppose you’re writing code (or defining a protocol) that involves interchanging messages, and those messages include text for humans to read. You owe it to the world to make any such text Unicode, so that the humans can use Korean or Arabic or whatever else they live in. It turns out to be non-obvious how to say “do Unicode right.” Today’s ongoing piece exists to tell you how ...
Scanography · Recently I visited Alex Waterhouse-Hayward; he gave me an excellent lunch and then I observed scanography at work, which was cool. Then I remembered that I’ve long wanted to write about his unique approach to technology. Let’s start with the good part, the picture: ...
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Long Links · My Long Links blog fragments curate long-form pieces that I think worth an investment of time, acknowledging that most people with jobs and lives and so on can’t read all of them, in the hopes that one or two will reward, Dear Reader, an intrusion into your scarce free time. Here’s another offering. But first, why haven’t I written any since December 2022? ...
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Workin’ for the Man · I think that anybody who publishes publicly should disclose who’s paying them, because it’s unethical not to. Call me old-fashioned. So I’m here to disclose a new paymaster and tell you almost nothing more. But stick around anyhow, because I have a moderately funny onboarding story ...
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Mimestream · I’ve been doing my email using the Mimestream app for the last six weeks or so, and apparently I’m not going back to Gmail-in-the-browser; the choice wasn’t a slam-dunk but I seem to have made it. Mimestream is a Gmail client (specifically, not IMap generally) and a native MacOS app. Now (assuming you know what Gmail and MacOS apps are) you know exactly what to expect, and whether or not you might like it. I’m just here to fill in the corners ...
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Pixel 7 RAW vs JPG · Back in 2019, when I had a Pixel 2, I compared the Google Android camera app’s RAW (specifically DNG) files against its JPGs, and was left with little temptation to save the DNG files. I just repeated the experiment with my brand-new Pixel 7 and the results are more complicated ...
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Fediverse Governance · When there’s anything that you’re a member or citizen or user of, you should be concerned about who runs it and how it’s run. This is most obviously true of your nation, but also of your book club and your workplace. And, these days, the online place where you interact with your fellow humans: Social Media. This essay describes the Fediverse and its self-defence mechanisms, outlines a potential attack on it, which makes a nice case study on who runs things, and how ...
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CSS Boost · The blog you are now looking at is looking a little different (better I think), especially on mobile devices, because the CSS has been improved. I have a report on the details, and unexpected lessons ...
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No Man’s Sky and Apple Silicon · I updated to a 14"/32G/M2-Pro MacBook Pro a few weeks ago but (unusually) haven’t written about it here. Recently, No Man’s Sky for Mac was announced. Since I played that regularly but casually for a couple of years starting in 2016 on PS4, I thought I’d give it a try, and now I’ve put in a few hours. Here’s a weird counterintuitive idea: Maybe games are what the MacBook Pro is built for? ...
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AR Vision · “AR”, as in Augmented Reality. “Vision”, as in not what Apple’s selling. It’s been a decade now that I’ve thought that AR will be a next Really Big Thing, once the technology to build it is here (which it isn’t). Since Meta and Apple and plenty of startups are muddying the waters around what AR might mean, here’s a vision of the AR mid-game. Not the end-game, since that’s unimaginable, but still a long way out from here ...
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Pixel 4 ➔ 7 · I just replaced my poor tired battered old Pixel 4 with a garish “Lemongrass” Pixel 7. I just don’t care that much about mobile technology any more — what was the last time a new phone changed your life? — but jumping four years and three generations ought to be newsworthy, no? ...
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Parasound Halo P 6 Preamp · I just bought one of these things and, while the high-end audio community is small, every time I post on the subject, I get stimulating commentary. In particular, anyone who’s interested in the state of the audio DAC art might want to read this. Also there’s a little bug in the P 6 manual that I’ll mention to help future Web-searchers. First things first: The P 6 is a pretty great product, and reasonably priced, and might fit into a lot of peoples’ homes ...
CL XLIV: Long Tree Lenses · We had our first real recreational visit to the cabin on the May long weekend. I pointed lenses at trees and came away with pictures that charmed me but are unsatisfactory. Which offers an excuse for a bit of camera geekery. No, even better, lens geekery ...
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Antifascist Ethics · Dear America: Please forgive this Canadian offering reactions to what’s going on south of our border. Because I struggle every day to avoid sinking beneath the waters of rage, and I need to offload. Here goes: Please meet my Uncle Allen Scott, an anti-Fascist ...
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Blog Previews · When you put a Web link in a Mastodon post, sometimes you get a nice little graphical preview, sometimes not. Before today, links to the blog you are now reading were, well, meh. Just a blank white box with the URL. So I put in the Open Graph Protocol prettification voodoo and the previews are nicer. Yay me ...
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Easy Cameras · I just enjoyed reading Have you considered using a camera? by Joe Rosensteel over at Six Colors. It says many smart things about photography with a phone as opposed to a real “camera”. Also, it’s funny; I recommend it. But then down toward the end it made an assertion that was so shocking that I had to stop and read it twice, then again: That shooting with a phone is easier and faster than with a camera. Because I believe the opposite is true ...
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