@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

TheIdOfAlan

@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io

Hi! I'm Alan. I've had the pleasure of working on the web for 20yrs and want to share that joy with everyone. The options for getting started kinda suck though.

So, I'm making a free, open-source site builder called Neopoligen. It's designed to make building your own site free and easy w/ no programming experience required.

You can learn more about it and follow along here if you're interested: https://www.neopoligen.com/

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

bijram, to random German
@bijram@graz.social avatar

Quote of the day: "I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are"

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@bijram love that. i'm adding it to my quote collection. is there someone i can attribute it to?

molly0xfff, to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

http://indieweb.org is a terrible influence

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@molly0xfff I'm currently on this train. Writing my own markdown replacement too, because why not :blobfoxbreadsnoot: (aiming to have v0.1 out this weekend :ablobfoxbongo: )

lauren, (edited ) to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

One of the aspects of commercial television series from the 60s and 70s (and to various extents somewhat later as well) was how producers didn't feel a need to score EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF EVERY SHOT.

Watching classics like "Columbo" and the original "Hawaii Five-0", you notice how the audio is so clear and conversations easy to hear and understand, without continuous music under (or sometimes over) virtually everything anyone is saying.

It's often noted how long these shows could go with a continuous shot without cutting, while "modern" shows feel a need for annoying multiple cuts per second much of the time.

But the audio issue is more basic. When there's a continuous score (whether or not low grade synthesizers are involved), just keeping track of what's being said can be a mess.

And this isn't just a problem for older viewers. Surveys are showing that a surprisingly high percentage of all age groups are now routinely leaving closed captioning enabled, the difficulty with hearing and understanding dialogue has become so intense on modern TV series and feature films (with the latter not even providing practical closed captioning in theaters in most cases).

"Can you hear me now?"

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@lauren same with the sound and good to know it's not just me

you got me thinking of a potentially interesting project of doing some analysis on how long unbroken shots are in different years of TV. It would be a heck of a thing to try to get the source material, but would be fun to see if someone managed it

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

Core competencies are something I think about a lot. I love to dig into what makes companies or ecosystems or social groups tick. Especially when that core competency enables what they do:

McDonald's, for example, is a real estate company that happens to make burgers.

Walmart is a shipping logistics company that also sells things.

What other examples can you think of where the core competency of the company is such that the "thing" a company does falls out naturally as a consequence?

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@hazelweakly I used to work at the PGA TOUR. The core competency isn't golf, it's media rights and licensing

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Today is my birthday!

If you'd like to do something for me for my birthday, would you please reply to this with—or by other means send me— something with colors you liked? Like an image or a video or a link. Music would also be acceptable if it gives you a strong synesthesiac association with color.

If this request confuses you, here are some examples of images with colors I found striking [Artists: Laurie Barmore, Vian Borchert, Erica Aurahack]. But your reply can be whatever colors you like.

Abstract art by Vian Borchert
Abstract art by Vian Borchert

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@mcc Here's one I'm proud of.

I made it by taking one of my black and white photos into and converting it to 3D cubes that I then took into to apply lighting for the the colors

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

This article is fucking amazing. It lays out exactly how to do database changes, codebase changes, and feature flag deployment strategies step by step with code examples in order to practice continuous deployment without downtime or breaking anything.

I've wanted to write this article for years and never got around to it. Now I don't have to!

(Looks like they have a book on continuous deployment coming out soon. I might have to get this for my teams 👀 )

https://oooops.dev/2021/07/30/surviving-continuous-deployment-in-distributed-systems/

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@hazelweakly There's nothing quite like having someone you trust in a field pointing you to a resource for something you want to learn

Much appreciated :ablobfoxbongo:

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

It has been a minute since I've done a music question, and it seems like a fun day for it, so:

What is your Pump Yourself Up Kickass Song?

Here's one of my favorites:

https://youtu.be/3CGxxJeQ6Tk?si=1cVMNoZWQzNOSpOA

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@RickiTarr

Bleachers - I Wanna Get Better is always a great listen for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5osPtE7kXI&t=56s

TheIdOfAlan, to random
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

I got to introduce a friend to using the "ISO 8601" date/time format for file naming so their podcast files stay sorted.

For dates, the format is

YYYY-MM-DD

Using that as the first thing in the file name you get things like:

2024-03-02 Some file.txt
2024-03-13 Another file.txt
2024-04-19 And another.txt
2024-05-09 And again.txt

It's a nice quality of life hack for when sorting by date is more important than sorting by title

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Who are the people who constantly need AI to make summaries of emails and then go and generate a thousand-word email because a single sentence “isn’t professional”

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@thomasfuchs insecure middle-managers?

TheIdOfAlan, to random
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

The word "thistles" looks like a cat stepped on the keyboard

TheIdOfAlan, to random
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

at a patio bar, there's a cat ripping up guitar loops. Gives me a idea: Get a bunch of musicians to make loop tracks to upload to music services and then play then as copyright free tunes for live streams

alda, (edited ) to random
@alda@topspicy.social avatar

Serious question: Do we really need to minify our JS and CSS files?

Does it matter at all if we're gzipping the HTTP streams anyway?

Edit: Just to be perfectly clear, by wondering if it matters, I'm not asking how many kb I may or may not be saving per request, but if it affects the user experience in a meaningful way like LCF due to large images with undefined dimensions does.

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@alda As far as I can tell the only difference would be in the parsing stage between "characters" and "tokens" for the CSS. I pulled a very limited set of data. I couldn't tell a difference in the time it takes

https://www.alanwsmith.com/pages/2aeq40qn/

TheIdOfAlan, to rust
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

One of the things I've noticed about is that it's easier for me to get back to code I wrote a while ago

I'm working on something I haven't touched in months. I wasn't really sure where to start, but poked at a few things and then the error messages started showing up and I just followed them to where I needed to go

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

on yeah, and the tests too. I wouldn't have been able to figure out what I was doing without them

TheIdOfAlan, to AdobePhotoshop
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

This is gross. seems to have opted everyone into a process that automatically ingests images into their machine learning system. You have to opt-out and you can't do that through the apps.

Here's how you can. Go to:

https://account.adobe.com/privacy

Then, turn off the "Content analysis" option.

If you're not familiar with this is one.

TheIdOfAlan, to rust
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

compilers should have a built in space invaders game to play in the terminal while they're doing their thing

TheIdOfAlan, to Blog
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

New post:

Accessible HTML Tabs For Web Pages

https://www.alanwsmith.com/en/2fggula7/?accessible-html-tabs-for-web-pages

TheIdOfAlan, to random
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

top reason I long for the days of a simpler internet: not having to post things in twelve different places

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

I’m 42-years-old, and I’m always looking out for new music. And not just new music – forgotten music. One of my hobbies is trawling YouTube for songs with 0 views.

But I’m an outlier. For most people, discovery of new music peaks at adolescence. And when you hit your 30s, musical taste calcifies.

There’s lots of data to back this up.

I notice this doesn’t just happen with music but with movies as well. Lots of older men don’t want to watch new movie franchises. They want to return to the old “nostalgia” well again and again.

Personally, I find such malaise depressing. I never want to stop growing as a human being, experiencing new things.

CHART: When was the best decade for music? Your answer probably depends on how old you are
CHART: On average, peoples' music taste evolved quickly through age 25, before reaching "maturity" in the mid-30s
CHART: average number of artists in listening rotation by age group

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@atomicpoet in case you aren't already familiar with it, Every Noise at Once is a project someone did while at spotify categorizing music. It's a fun place to explore

https://everynoise.com/

girlonthenet, to random
@girlonthenet@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @girlonthenet how about sky blue

    kubikpixel, (edited ) to rust
    @kubikpixel@chaos.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @kubikpixel rust error messages looked like a foreign language when I first started working with the language. As I've gained practice learning to ready them, I can't imagine working without them.

    I've heard rust folks say that if an error doesn't contain enough information to let you know how to it, they consider that a bug. That's just an amazing philosophy.

    (Of course, it takes practice to learn how to read them to get the info so it's not an instant thing, but it's awesome)

    thomasfuchs, to random
    @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

    Guess the song!

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @thomasfuchs psycho killer - talking heads?

    hazelweakly, to random
    @hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

    What's one of the silliest domain names you own? Mine is legit-elephant.lol and there's an entire story behind it. Some of you were even here for this!

    C'mere and sit down, I'll tell you the story of the fateful night in the fediverse where Elon Musk flipped his lid and the entire fediverse flipped a middle finger to him.

    The story begins during the winter holidays of 2022, back when hachyderm lived on Kris Nova's servers

    It was a different world then, wasn't it?

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @hazelweakly I used to have variations of votes4sale_com. The idea was to put it up before a presidential election with bar graphs representing the "Votes 4 Sale Polling Results". You could add individual votes for your candidate by clicking as much as you want. Or, you could pay $1 for a thousand votes

    It was gonna be a shot at memeing into a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

    I never built the site and haven't thought about it in years. But, now that I think about it, it is an election year...

    thomasfuchs, to random
    @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

    Probably the most important solar observing safety bit:

    ⚠️ Even if you’re in the path of totality you need to use eclipse glasses at all times the sun is visible even if it’s only the tiniest little sliver.

    🚫 You can NEVER look at the sun without eclipse glasses.

    👁️ Only during totality, and totality only (e.g. not at 99.9%) you can look without glasses because the Moon literally completely hides the sun so you’re only looking at the Moon then.

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @thomasfuchs It maybe worth mentioning there are apps that use GPS to find your location to figure out and announce when you're in totality (and therefore when it's safe to look).

    I used one for a prior eclipse and it was great. I wouldn't have known when it was safe otherwise.

    TheIdOfAlan, to music
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    this is amazing. a drummer who's never heard bulls on parade by rage against the machine f-ing kills it doing their own version on the first take:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSX7D-dJRBo

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