Minor joys:
Working with some Poecile montanus (willow tit) data and consistently using the Finnish common name hömötiainen, but without the umlauts for data handling reasons… reading file homotiainen_atlas3_4.csv (literally Homo tit) 🏳️🌈
Do physical backups, kids:
Got my computer working again after Dropbox messed it up, by restoring from a Time Machine backup. Wouldn’t have lost any files since they were in Dropbox, but restoring the computer would have been so much harder. Luckily I had a recent backup; wasn’t always the case.
Having read about this I cannot help thinking that this falling apart is an intentional behaviour of the plant (Crassula ovata). When it gets too moist, it decides to break into pieces, then the pieces will grow into new plants…
New factoid. F1 cars are ridiculously un-aerodynamic (some sleek modern production EV:s get a Cd of 0.22):
"Interestingly, modern F1cars are reported to have Cd values of about 0.85 with corresponding CdA[m2] values near 1.2.1. These values are approximately triple of those for the modern road car, and only a bit higher then typical bus."
Unfair / biology:
Me and my partner at the same time in the allotment garden, both wearing T-shirt and shorts.
I get tens of bites on my legs from mosquitoes, gnats and midges, that itch for days. She gets one tiny little red spot.
Font rendering incorrectly in an interactive PDF, but only in Chrome.
Previous PDFs exported from the same file render correctly. Only obvious difference is that the faulty file is PDF version 1.7. and the other 1.5.
You can’t choose the PDF version in Interactive PDF export. However, this was fixed simply by re-saving the PDF in Acrobat (no need to change version). So something tiny is broken in InDesign’s 1.7 pipeline and not in Acrobat’s. #InDesign#typography
@frankrolf this becomes stranger – tried to make a new file, no issue. Tried to make a new file from the affected file (deleted all but one page), also no issue! Nor when making single-page exports of the affected InDesign document.
It is funny how Gary Larson went from a niche cartoon that you would find on mostly biology people’s noticeboards to widely popular meme fodder. He was in the 2020s back in the 1990s? Or the nerds took over? Or… both?
Maybe specifically a false memory, but I think I asked dad to explain Cow Tools. Some other Larson cartoons for sure.
@jhilden Got a Larson compilation when I had to spend time in a hospital due to a knee operation in early ’90s. Made an impact then. Ship of fools / car of idiots…
@jhilden Okay, so I have not one but two of these. The first one is a reprint from 1992, I think I got it in 1993. Both have close to 200 pages, with mostly four cartoons per page. The amount of quality stuff seems to be quite absurd.
One thought after a quick look: there’s a dark side to the far side but it’s not pretentiously edgy like so many things in the ’90s. (Well, the material in these is from the ’80s, but anyway…)
I was afraid that there were a lot less swifts than last year, but seems their arrival is staggered. Now in the beginning of June it seems like there’s about as many as last year. Their population is still down. Presumably they became a companion species to humans in the Middle Ages and spread widely in Europe, but changes in buildings is one cause of the current decline, possibly along with insect loss. https://vis.social/@jhilden/112469252884233799
Observation on visual culture, sparked by re-reading Lem’s Solaris:
The novel is full of vivid and disturbing imagery relating to the ocean (which both films alas mostly sideline), yet there seems to be very little visual art online inspired by it, apart from the movie posters and book covers.
I’m arguing that most of what could be termed ”fan art” is heavily reliant on some pre-existing iconic imagery. This also directly feeds into AI art. No Solaris storyboard by H.R. Giger, no fan art.
Bizarre:
"On 10 May 1931, the Schienenzeppelin exceeded a speed of 200 km/h (120 mph) for the first time. Afterwards, it was exhibited to the general public throughout Germany. On 21 June 1931, it set a new world railway speed record of 230.2 km/h on the Berlin–Hamburg line between Karstädt and Dergenthin, which was not surpassed by any other rail vehicle until 1954. The railcar still holds the land speed record for a petrol powered rail vehicle." #trains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schienenzeppelin
I found The Zone of Interest quite good.
Wondering if it might have worked as well or better without the sound effects and abstract imagery trying to increase the sense of foreboding.
Also, maybe a bit far-fetched or excessive perhaps, but can be as an allegory of current society where many would just hope that the vines grow and cover the proverbial concentration camp walls out of sight. #films https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7160372/