The Garden of Computational Delights
https://arbesman.net/computationaldelights/ [arbesman.net]
2023-08-06 22:17
tags:
essay
links
tech
web
Beneath the utilitarian purpose of computation, computing is also a source of delight and wonder. Software is not just databases and mail merges or SaaS and spreadsheets; it’s creative coding and simulated cities, code poetry and bulletin board systems. It’s websites that dazzle and iPhone apps that make the heart sing. And it’s sometimes even spreadsheets, coerced to dance and do all manner of weirdness. All of these approaches to computing are what am collecting here, and bundling under the term “garden of computational delights.” This is a list of places that collect or catalyze sources for being enraptured by the web, programming, and the wider world of computing. Or, as per Tim Hwang and Omar Rizwan, this is a garden of all the different places you might discover where “the computer is a feeling.”
source: Dfly
A Blog Post With Every HTML Element
https://www.patrickweaver.net/blog/a-blog-post-with-every-html-element/ [www.patrickweaver.net]
2023-08-04 00:16
tags:
docs
essay
html
standard
text
ux
web
I could, element by element, continue to add support (mostly by making CSS updates for each element to fit in with the rest of my style choices) as I came across specific needs for them, but not one to shy away from an exhaustive exploration, I decided to write this post and attempt to use every element.
A goal of the post, was to avoid delaying other future posts with CSS updates on a previously unused element, but in reality it took a year and a half to make all the updates for just this post! I am using the MDN Web Docs list of HTML elements as a reference which has more than 100 tags divided into a few categories, which I will also use in this post.
source: L
Florida Woman Bites Camel
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/27/florida-woman-bites-camel [www.newyorker.com]
2022-05-22 17:41
tags:
essay
hoipolloi
language
media
Some thoughts on the art of the newspaper lede.
How I experience the web today
https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/ [how-i-experience-web-today.com]
2022-04-19 22:45
tags:
browser
business
design
development
essay
interactive
ux
web
An interactive experience!
source: DF
Don't End The Week With Nothing
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-end-the-week-with-nothing [training.kalzumeus.com]
2021-03-21 21:37
tags:
business
development
essay
ideas
life
I’m a capitalist. A friend of mine is a devoted Marxist. I think we mutually agree that, considering any particular employee, it is in that employee’s personal interest to stop selling hours of labor and start renting access to his accumulated capital as soon as humanly possible.
A lot of day jobs structurally inhibit capital formation. If I were a Marxist I’d say “And this is an intended consequence of Capital’s desire to keep Labor subservient to it”, but I honestly think it’s true even without anybody needing to twirl their mustache.
source: HN
Autological humor
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=48541 [languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu]
2020-10-12 00:45
tags:
essay
language
A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
Holy Heck! Fiddlesticks! Amid Coronavirus, Potty Talk Torments Sports
https://www.wsj.com/articles/holy-heck-fiddlesticks-amid-coronavirus-potty-talk-torments-sports-11597931882 [www.wsj.com]
2020-08-20 16:23
tags:
essay
language
media
sports
This is a column about curse words, and the deployment of curse words in sports. Don’t worry: I’m not going to use a curse word here. At least none of the really good ones. I might use a drat, a rats, a Fudgesicles, or a phooey, or, if I get really agitated—and this is just a warning to the kids at home, curled up reading a print newspaper, as kids do—a gadzooks. But I’m not going to say $*#$@!. Or %&#*!, *#$#@, or #*$!(@%. And definitely not #$*#@*^!.
The Art of the Bad Faith Argument
https://www.thebellows.org/the-art-of-the-bad-faith-argument/ [www.thebellows.org]
2020-07-08 00:16
tags:
essay
hoipolloi
ideas
language
social
The person who types “lol” is never actually laughing; the person who types I’M SCREAMING is silently dabbing at a screen. In the same way, the person who is perpetually shocked and outraged and brimming with righteous fury is almost always lying to themselves. They’re as affectless as the rest of us: play-acting, downloading synthetic emotions, and then passing them on.
source: jwz
How to decode a data breach notice
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/19/decoding-data-breach-notice/ [techcrunch.com]
2020-05-21 04:02
tags:
business
essay
language
security
But data breach notifications have become an all-too-regular exercise in crisis communications. These notices increasingly try to deflect blame, obfuscate important details and omit important facts. After all, it’s in a company’s best interest to keep the stock markets happy, investors satisfied and regulators off their backs. Why would it want to say anything to the contrary?
source: white
Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY
https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/05/10/why-we-at-famous-company-switched-to-hyped-technology/ [saagarjha.com]
2020-05-11 18:24
tags:
development
essay
valley
Ultimately, however, our decision to switch was driven by our difficulty in hiring new talent for $UNREMARKABLE_LANGUAGE, despite it being taught in dozens of universities across the United States. Our blog posts on $PRACTICAL_OPEN_SOURCE_FRAMEWORK seemed to get fewer upvotes when posted on Reddit as well, cementing our conviction that our technology stack was now legacy code.
source: HN
The ‘War on Runners’ Is Getting Hot and Sweaty
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-war-on-runners-is-getting-hot-and-sweaty-11588597865 [www.wsj.com]
2020-05-04 14:37
tags:
essay
life
I’ve honestly never seen people more excited for walks. It’s the Great American Walk Renaissance. Even the dogs are like: OK, this is getting to be a bit much.
This is why the Big Walk is usually the highlight of the day, right up there with the 4:59 p.m. bourbon.
As for the runners…OK, let’s deal with the runners, because the runners are getting a lot of grief right now. Some folks are getting steamed at the runners—social media teems with accounts of runners barreling around sidewalks like getaway cars from a bank heist, weaving among pedestrians, not adhering to rules of safe distance and personal space. People are getting so mad at runners, they’re starting to call them “joggers,” which runners really hate, because a “runner” is someone committed to fitness, and a “jogger” is someone who waddles around in sweatpants while eating a turkey leg.
Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before I Started Teaching Differential Equations
https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf [web.williams.edu]
2020-04-20 21:57
tags:
academia
essay
math
pdf
One of many mistakes of my youth was writing a textbook in ordinary differential equations. It set me back several years in my career in mathematics. However, it had a redeeming feature: it led me to realize that I had no idea what a differential equation is. The more I teach differential equations, the less I understand the mystery of differential equations.
source: trivium
95%-ile isn't that good
https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ [danluu.com]
2020-02-12 00:12
tags:
development
essay
life
Reaching 95%-ile isn’t very impressive because it’s not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn’t help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it’s just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things.
There are several sections here. Every time I thought I was nearing the end, more content showed up.
source: danluu
How to Get Someone to Take One for the Team
http://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2020/1/16/how-to-get-someone-to-take-one-for-the-team [www.basicinstructions.net]
2020-01-17 22:52
tags:
comic
essay
life
Nailed it: “There’s no I in team” says the guy saying someone needs to take one for the team.
I went to see a movie, and instead I saw the future
https://m.signalvnoise.com/i-went-to-see-a-movie-and-instead-i-saw-the-future/ [m.signalvnoise.com]
2020-01-15 21:54
tags:
essay
future
tech
This is the future, I’m afraid. A future that plans on everything going right so no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong. Because computers don’t make mistakes. An automated future where no one actually knows how things work.
source: E
Farewell to Starbucks’s green straws
https://www.economist.com/the-world-in/2019/12/30/farewell-to-starbuckss-green-straws [www.economist.com]
2019-12-31 15:14
tags:
essay
food
life
In the long history of pipe-assisted drinking—beginning with the gold beer-sipping tubes of the Sumerians—Starbucks’s plastic straws knew they were a cut above the rest. Their tight white wrapping carried not only English words but a stylish French inscription, Pas recommandé pour utiliser dans les boissons chaudes. Released from that confinement, springing up ready, they stood straight, stiff and tall as a stalk of wheat, with no disfiguring articulations; for they never quailed or bent. And their colour was beautiful. It was darker than the leaves of spring, lighter than the Washington forests and the logo of the company, yet fresh, viridian, straight from the palette of a Monet or a Van Gogh. But despite all that they were doomed to disappear by 2020, for not being green enough.
My Semester With the Snowflakes
https://gen.medium.com/my-semester-with-the-snowflakes-888285f0e662 [gen.medium.com]
2019-12-30 23:40
tags:
academia
essay
hoipolloi
At 52, I was accepted to Yale as a freshman. The students I met there surprised me.
Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html [www.nytimes.com]
2019-11-05 03:54
tags:
essay
hoipolloi
movie
Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.
Besides a bit of old fashioned hand wringing here and there, a fairly level take, although I’m not sure how much I can bring myself to care.
source: HN
Coffee is Hard
https://www.stilldrinking.org/coffee-is-hard [www.stilldrinking.org]
2019-10-18 19:41
tags:
essay
gaming
life
retro
Quest games started with a premise like “escape the wizard” or “escape the aliens” then forced you to do a series of banal and random tasks to avoid the many, many ways to die. Once you know the way, most of the games can be completed in under an hour. On the first go, it took my whole family weeks. Not the least of the horror was often having to do things several scenes before there’s any reason for having done them: in Space Quest I, the hero-janitor Roger has to refuse the first offer for his bike, so the guy will come back a little later and throw in a jetpack. Of course there’s no indication that he’ll come back with a jetpack, and no reason to think there’s a need for a jetpack until three days later when Roger exits his spaceship and floats into the void because he doesn’t have a jetpack. This leads to replaying most of the game a dozen times just looking for a jetpack, which is hidden not in a spaceship closet or a bar or a cavern, but behind a tough-but-not-too-tough bargaining strategy. It also took about ninety seconds to switch between screens, so exploration was grueling on a good day.
After playing the first two, I realized I’d been programming for 17 years and could probably make my own, especially when all the art is 320 pixels wide and that’s about how many pixels I can work with before people give me a sideways look and ask if I really have a liberal arts degree. I decided to base the story loosely on my novel, for two reasons: first, if the game happens to get the kind of notoriety my novel has not, I might be able to boost sales by claiming the novel can serve as a hint book. Second, I spent nineteen years writing that stupid book, and this seemed like a good a way to manage the withdrawal symptoms. Three weeks later I’d built a rendering engine I’m quite proud of, a simple command and scene logic processor, and accidentally reinvented GIF compression.
source: HN
How to Read “Gilgamesh”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh [www.newyorker.com]
2019-10-16 01:45
tags:
essay
fiction
history
The heart of the world’s oldest long poem is found in its gaps and mysteries.