@medievalist@writing.exchange
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

medievalist

@medievalist@writing.exchange

I'm a Medievalist, a Celticist, a technologist and I write for money. I'm in the U.S. Unless I know you, I will probably block you; I've got a serial harasser. #Apple #stationery #fountainPens #analog #SF #CelticStudies #Medieval #Apple

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craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

Finished my day of corporate work. Needed to do something from a mag. Went to grab a drink. Got a great line in my head to kick off an entirely different article. Procrastinated from the thing I was supposed to be doing by writing the frame for the other piece, which I’ve just done a count on and discovered it’s ~50% of what I’m supposed to file, and it all came out in about ten minutes. And it all works.

This is… good? I think?

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@craiggrannell Yes; this is a facet of imposter syndrome, and pretty much all writers experience at some point and to some degree. Sometimes it seems to me that the more "successful" a writer is, the more imposter syndrome eats at them.

cstross, (edited ) to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Funny how the Americans denouncing Gaza Solidarity demonstrations at American universities are all cops and christo-fascist politicians, while the Jewish academics and students are fine with them …
https://mastodon.social/@DrALJONES/112331038212149373

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@cstross Jewish students are protesting the attack on Gaza

ml, to science
@ml@ecoevo.social avatar

With Google search results having been awful for some time now, I have to assume that Google Scholar results are also less satisfactory.

While I'm old enough to have been in undergrad before the WWW, I wasn't in grad school before the 21st c. For those of you old enough, how were you doing literature review of journal articles back in ye olde days? @academicchatter #Science #AcademicChatter #Library

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@ml @academicchatter First with paper indices, MLA, etc. and standard annual bibliographies in my field/specific areas, then the last year of my diss writing Jstor and Project Muse helped a lot, most useful tool was citations in good articles, second most useful were tips from faculty & peers. My original chair was useless; senior faculty who stepped in at the end was a gem

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

On partworks, another thing the graphic novel ones do is typically build up spine art, issue by issue, to encourage you to buy the entire set. Frustratingly, the Hachette ones omit information from the spines – Eaglemoss (RIP) partworks at least included a title.

I’ve long wondered if there was any solution to this, but beyond making dust jackets for dozens of books (and I hate dust jackets), I can’t think of one.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@craiggrannell Tags like libraries use inside the books, with metadata, readable with a smartphone app

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

By the way, here is my oldest surviving laptop bag—a limited edition bag for an Apple Powerbook (1xx series) from 1993-ish. I can't imagine today's Apple releasing anything remotely as playful.

Photo of an Apple Powerbook padded case from 1994. Has the old rainbow apple logo on a crimson accessory pocket, with canary yellow side panel, fronting a lime green main compartment lid with turqoise sides and rear. Design-wise it's an old-school laptop bag with black nylon handles and a zipper that allows the laptop to be used inside the bag when it's open. End view, showing the sky-blue end of the case and it's green topside.
Photo of an Apple Powerbook padded case from 1994. Has the old rainbow apple logo on a crimson accessory pocket, with canary yellow side panel, fronting a lime green main compartment lid with turqoise sides and rear. Design-wise it's an old-school laptop bag with black nylon handles and a zipper that allows the laptop to be used inside the bag when it's open. View of the open case showing black nylon interior with organizer panel inside the lid.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@cstross I remember those as a limited release meant to match the special Japanese market PowerBook

johnvoorhees, to random
@johnvoorhees@macstories.net avatar

The fun part of this story was going back and pinpointing the day @robb suggested we do a podcast together based on a photo I took on July 15, 2015 in the midst of planning my escape to the indie life.

https://www.macstories.net/news/ruminate-joins-macstories/

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@johnvoorhees @robb Firefox does not like the www version of the ruminate site link on the MacStories site. SSL certificate error

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Research Suggests A Large Proportion Of Web Material In Languages Other Than English Is Machine Translations Of Poor Quality Texts”

"In other words, however bad the problems are that AI is creating for English-language material, they are probably worse in languages found less commonly online" https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/29/research-suggests-a-large-proportion-of-web-material-in-languages-other-than-english-is-machine-translations-of-poor-quality-texts/

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@craiggrannell @baldur Check your local libraries; many offer duolingo or Rosetta or similar, or language-learning DVDs

johnxlibris, to random
@johnxlibris@glammr.us avatar

Added an "elsewhere" page to my site to list other places you can find me online. Slowly building this thing out. https://www.johnxlibris.com/elsewhere/

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@johnxlibris I'm mulling over my Web presences and sites and yours is helping re-think my 27 years of html sites and 22 years of blogging, Thanks for sharing

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

I really need to move off micro.blog for cross-posting and bookmarks. It’s extremely laggy. The web app is buggier than hell. The iPad app almost manages to be worse—text input has become a chaotic mess after the latest OS update. I really need to figure something else out.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@baldur I wanted to like micro.blog so much but it was unwieldy and frustrating. I think I lasted six months.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Nativity-style statuettes found at Pompeii said to suggest pagan ritual

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/24/nativity-style-statuettes-found-at-pompeii-suggest-pagan-ritual-experts-say

Totally shocked and baffled that Xtianity (which is basically iron-age Pokemon for gods) could have "borrowed" the nativity scene tradition from the cult of Cybele

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@panton41 @cstross See also Mithras and Mithraism

drdrang, to random
@drdrang@fosstodon.org avatar

I want to clean up the internals of my website in the coming year, but I am woefully out of date on current HTML and CSS. What books would be the best to learn from? Note: I want it to remain static and don’t want to use Hugo or similar tools. The fun for me is in doing it myself.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@drdrang @Meyerweb wrote the best CSS book. Complicated udeas clearly explained https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/css-the-definitive/9781098117603/

adam, to random
@adam@social.lol avatar

Poor KUR T, another victim of reckless kerning. This is senseless and totally preventable.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@adam That I is a little off too.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@adam If you're dyslexic (I am), bad kerning plays merry Hell with the ability to correctly interpret text

gruber, to random
@gruber@mastodon.social avatar

Spitball idea for iOS: When doing a screen recording, automatically turn on Do Not Disturb for the duration of the recording.

So many times when I’m recording my screen, say, to have a video to send a developer with a bug report, the recording gets ruined by an incoming notification.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@gruber Focus mode for recording

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

Downplaying the Fact That Apple Shot ‘Scary Fast’ With iPhones
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/10/31/downplaying-shot-on-iphone

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@daringfireball You nailed the actual point of the excercise here:

“The whole point is that an iPhone 15 Pro camera is so good that it can fit right in on a high-budget commercial film shoot, and produce world-class results.”

I think we, as consumers, pundits, users and digerati, have fallen into the trap of negativity. Negativity is easy. Negativity extorts the economics of attention.

MeanwhileinCanada, to random
@MeanwhileinCanada@ohai.social avatar

An owl stole a child's stick horse and flew around with it.

Photos by Eric Lind

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@MeanwhileinCanada This all comes from reading Harry Potter

adam, to random
@adam@social.lol avatar

My son picked up an original Myst CD-ROM today. This is all the validation I’ve ever needed as a parent.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@adam The Voyager HyperCard version?

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@adam I think that was Voyager's @steveriggins would know.

emilymbender, to random
@emilymbender@dair-community.social avatar

At yesterday's US House subcommittee hearing on risks of AI, there was a lot of enthusiasm for privacy enhancing ML technologies. That seems like a valuable direction, but it alone isn't enough. A company training privacy enhanced ML systems over your data ... still has your data, and we don't have to accept that.

Apropos:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-personal-information-is-probably-being-used-to-train-generative-ai-models/

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@emilymbender I wonder about how copyright law affects personal data

evacide, to random
@evacide@hachyderm.io avatar

It is tempting to dismiss that manifesto as incoherent and self-serving, but it is important to remember that this it is also a list of beliefs the founders of tech companies will need to recite if they want investment money from that guy and his friends.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@evacide Someone with access should run it through turnitin

christianselig, to random
@christianselig@mastodon.social avatar

iPad feature I'd love: deep sleep. I find whenever I go a few days or a week between using an iPad, it's often dead or almost dead. An auto-deep sleep mode after 24 hours of non-use would be awesome, even if it took 5 seconds or so to wake back up

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@christianselig Why not power off?

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

It turns out that calling @elonmusk a c*nt on Twitter is insufficient to earn a ban/suspension these days, so I'm on the verge of giving up and just deleting my account. (Nobody's DM'd me there in the past two months, which was the only thing I was keeping it around for.)

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@cstross Keep the account, so no one can use your name

malwaretech, to random

I'm always shocked by how expensive basic European experiences are in the US. One of my favorite things is high street shops. You have a bunch of stores with apartments above them, so you can always live within walking distance of basically everything. In the US they separate things into commercial and residential districts so you have to drive everywhere.

Areas that allow mixing residential and commercial buildings are so rare that supply & demand sends costs through the roof. In Europe living in an apartment above stores is a budget option for people who can't afford homes, in the US you basically have to be wealthy and often those apartments cost as much as an entire house.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@malwaretech That;'s not really true outside of large urban areas. There are apartments above businesses in smaller towns, even in urban neighborhoods but especially in college towns

ChrisMayLA6, to random
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

Hmmm.... so 's 'plan' for the is to start off by 'encouraging' staff to work overtime to help start to clear the backlog, while they wait for investment to kick-in.

He claims the staff are 'up for this because they know that bringing down the waiting list will reduce the pressure on them in the long run'.... OK... but presumably only for the short time before his long(er) term plan comes not focus...

Getting already burnt out staff to work (even) harder is a big risk!

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@tokensane @cstross @JelliedHeals @ChrisMayLA6 This "I suffered so you must to" rationale is used in every field, from medical to vocational/crafts, to academic. It is always false.

reginasbread, to random
@reginasbread@homo.promo avatar

I'm so tired of teenagers being "the chosen ones" in fiction. please, let a middle-aged woman save the universe! she's seen some shit and dealt with it. she's tired of it all. she doesn't give a fuck. she's angry. she will get this shit done.

medievalist,
@medievalist@writing.exchange avatar

@reginasbread Not exactly what you are looking for but close: Elizabeth Moon Remnant Population

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