@baldur@toot.cafe
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

baldur

@baldur@toot.cafe

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

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baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

I wonder why* all the people handwringing publicly voicing vague “concerns” about Will Smith’s return to cinemas weren’t as anxious when, say, Mel Gibson returned to acting and directing even though Mel Gibson is clearly a much worse person in every obervable way

(* Rhetorical question. I know why.)

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Anti Trust in Tech – Pixel Envy”

https://pxlnv.com/blog/anti-trust-in-tech/

> These product introductions all look like hubris. Arrogance, really — recognition of the significant power these corporations wield and the lack of competition they face.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Reworking Remote - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism”

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/access/2024/05/23/reworking-remote

rysiek, to CrystalsHashtags
@rysiek@mstdn.social avatar

While is doing an absolute stupid with their new licensing terms, and (now Canva-owned) slashes prices by half in a "flash sale", I am once again asking people to consider supporting tools instead.

Yes, they are far from perfect.

But with a small fraction of what these closed source vendors are raking in, these tools could be made immeasurably better.

And they won't end up bought up and enshittified, as experience with past attempts at doing that to FLOSS tools shows.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@rysiek While I agree with the sentiment, I’ve tried again and again for over twenty-five years to use FLOSS photography apps they’re generally outright unusable for me

No doubt they work for other people but Gimp, Darktable, and every tool for photography I’ve tried is just UI hell for me, even when they have the actual functionality (which is rare). Even the ones that are somewhat learnable (they’re never actually usable) tend to break on HiDPI screens

Krita and Penpot are great, though.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Here's a small project I've been working on:

"Basic, Beautiful & Buildless"

https://buildless.baldurbjarnason.com/

It's a small tool for taking a list of npm package names, generating a pinned esm.sh url for them, parsing through their import graph, and generating an import map, module preloads with integrity attributes and a script loading the import map polyfill (with integrity attribute) in a neat little copy-pasteable HTML textarea chunk

And it also calculates the bandwidth/payload of each package.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

It's a rough first version. Expect it to break and have problems 🙂

It's made with eleventy and @swc/wasm-web. You can find the github repository here: https://github.com/baldurbjarnason/basic-beautiful-buildless

I'll do a proper write-up and announcement next week after I've smoothed out some of the first release wrinkles

Kind of curious to see if this is something people who aren't me will find useful

If not, at least it was fun to make 🤷‍♂️

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

(Used Github for this because I still need to figure out a good way to deploy to Netlify from Codeberg.)

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“The challenge with Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare, and so on | Go Make Things”

https://gomakethings.com/the-challenge-with-netlify-vercel-cloudflare-and-so-on/

> When one provider handles your hosting, manages automated deployment, runs a few dozen micro-services and serverless APIs, provides your database through their proprietary API, and more, migrating away to somewhere else becomes very expensive

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Isn't it always a bit worrying when a service you use and like decides to rebrand to become MORE generic and less distinct?

https://convertkit.com/resources/blog/convertkit-to-kit

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

It's one thing to rebrand when the old brand has an issue (name conflicts, trademark issues, or it just didn't work) but this? Going from "ConvertKit", only one thing in the world it could mean, to "Kit" is just worrying.

Shit like this is usually just egocentric busywork done by execs who've lost the plot

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@yatil 😄

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“I don’t understand the sacrifices people make for work – Terence Eden’s Blog”

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/06/i-dont-understand-the-sacrifices-people-make-for-work/

> Would you work for a paltry wage and risk your domestic relationships in service of people who didn't appreciate you? No.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“76% of new artists say that music career is financially unsustainable - News - Mixmag”

https://mixmag.net/read/new-artists-career-financially-unsustainable-study-news

This is happening across the board—every creative industry is affected.

And it didn't always use to be this bad

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Sometimes it feels like half of my social media is annoyed because they think climate activists are making unreasonable demands

While the other half is near-panic because they've done the research and realise that, in the understated words of the Magic Eight Ball, "outlook not so good"

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@bastianallgeier Same here.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

For example, the latest modelling on North Atlantic convection streams puts the odds of them shutting down within my lifetime at around 35-50%, rendering Iceland much less habitable.

And, honestly, I'm perfectly fine with wiping out entire industries if that's what it takes to prevent that from happening.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@alda Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

baldur,
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@bastianallgeier Ooof, yeah, I relate to that quite strongly

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“CSS Cap Unit”

https://ishadeed.com/article/css-cap-unit/

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Neatnik Notes · The InclusiveWeb”

https://notes.neatnik.net/2024/06/the-inclusiveweb

> An IndieWeb that isn’t inclusive offers no value to the world.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Introducing the CSS anchor positioning API | Blog | Chrome for Developers”

https://developer.chrome.com/blog/anchor-positioning-api

This is going to be extremely useful once it gets broad support. (And I think it's likely to AFAICT?)

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Haven't filled my quota of cat photos lately, so here are a few old ones.

These date back to when I was living in Bristol twenty years ago.

A black and white photograph of a cat looking out into the distance while standing in the middle of a parking lot
A grey-patterned cat crouches on a headstone while looking at the photographer

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Beware the cloud of hype - The History of the Web”

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/beware-the-cloud-of-hype/

> The rise of dot-com companies was pitched as a no consequences gold rush. We were on the precipice of a fictional future where everyone would be cashing in on the web. The reality was quite a bit more slow, and boring.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Links (4 June 2024): https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/links-19/

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

One of my posts just went semi-viral on Threads and that is slightly terrifying.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@craiggrannell 😬

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