Category: Longform
You are viewing all posts from this category, beginning with the most recent.
Medium's stats are broken, so I left...
This is my stats page. This is not helpful.
Much like today’s other causes of cultural constipation such as race relations, government, cold medications, etc., etc., ad nauseam, the page you see above appears functional, but is not.
Sure, you can click on things and you can see numbers and charts, but none of it is functional to the point where you can derive real, usable data regarding any of the indicated data points.
Take the chart above for example. The Views chart only shows you how many articles were “viewed”, but not which articles. It’s just a number. The Claps indicate how many times the Clap button was clicked, but not by how many users. You need to click the number of claps (as seen in the image below. Yes, it’s that tiny, gray thing at the bottom right corner of the screenshot.) on the article stats page to see that information. Pointing at the clap icon unnecessarily informs you are unable to clap your own article. Just make it all open the list of clappers, Medium, or put the data on the stats page. Astonishingly, readers are allowed to Clap as many times as they like, so those 10 claps for the first Mac OS piece are from two people. TWO!
Apple's Butterfly keyboard tragedy & potential e-waste disaster
Without official unit sales numbers from Apple, we have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of these machines are in the wild.
I am a life-long fan of Apple. Born in ‘68, I grew up in the thick of the consumer electronics and personal computer boom of the late 70's. Keeping to myself at times, loudly evangelistic at others, a shame-free Mac Ex-pat, reluctant Windows user for a decade, and always the staunch critic, my fandom runs deep. From my early experiences with Apple ][e machines, to all of the Macs I’ve had since, and arriving at now with the two Mac Minis on my desk, one an M1 and the other a last-gen Intel model, I have had my most satisfying and productive years on Macs.
Fortunate for me that I missed Apple’s Butterfly Keyboard era, then.
Advertising is dead. Please flush on your way out…
Ads are almost literally everywhere.
It is rare, but every once in a while I presume to speak for everyone. It’s not like this is breaking news or a controversial hot-take, either. No need to sit down or get a stiff drink:
Nobody, but NOBODY likes advertisements… except ad people.
When I was working IT at Saatchi & Saatchi LA back in the mid-2000’s, Toyota was paying them tens of millions a year to make a handful of splashy national ads. Sure, they were epic, for ads, but all that money floated a five story building bursting with 500 worker bees that would pump out a half dozen ads a year.
I don't like my mechanical keyboard
The Keychron K5 SE Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard is anything but low profile. It’s also a clicky, sloppy, error-prone mess for a writer who taught himself to touch type using his own system.
CLACK CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIKTIKTIK… CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIK… AUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!!
Tap tap, goes my Keychron K5 SE. It takes nigh on nothing to press a key, an advantage I’m sure is prized by gamers more rabid and entrenched than myself, but when I’m writing I’m forced to BACKSPACE to repair something that was rendered illegible every third or fourth word. So, I’m typing this review on my Dell tablet PC with a typecover-style input device, and my typing accuracy rockets back up to normal levels.
It’s time to open source MacOS 9: An Open Letter to Tim Cook
The now legendary Mac OS 9 desktop, a refinement of what came before and the influence for today’s macOS releases. Even to this day, untold thousands, likely tens of thousands, classic Mac OS machines are being used & loved, traded & developed for. [SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons]
Dear Tim,
How’ve you been? Good, I hope. I’ve been watching Apple’s events and your production quality is just top notch. Serious kudos to your production team. Gotta love those drone shots and slick transitions :) I’ve also been tracking the transition to Apple Silicon and I’ve been impressed. I got myself an M1 Mini that I’ve very pleased with, so much so I bought one for my wife.
Accelerationism is stupid
If you think Musk is going to get you to Mars, just check out how he’s been managing Twitter… er, X. This guy’s no genius. Don’t be fooled. Yes, this was made with some dumb AI thing I found.
A conversation I had with a friend of mine. In addition, the term "Longtermism" has been replaced with Accelerationism. I've updated this piece with some more context at the end.
> Bryan:
Late night realizations and insights. I’m afraid that, on my deathbed, I’m going to realize that nobody ever helped me live, they just helped me die.
No, I’m not suicidal or wanting to die or anything. But I can only imagine that if I ever end up in a hospice and I know I’m going to die, and a kind nurse dispenses me with a lethal dose of morphine — or more likely — fentanyl — that’s all I can think of. No one ever helped me truly live. They just helped me literally die. And that’s sad.
Saving the Internet for Humanity: Dollarnomics 101
Or not…
The Internet of 2023 sucks.
Every site, every service, every entree and every destination on the modern Web of today is controlled by corporations. Blood and treasure is expended, our personal data and real money is hoovered up to feed bottomless C-suite salaries…
While the World Wide Web may be comprised of an endless cavalcade of corporate entities vying for ultimate control, there remains a much, much larger contingent that has yet to stand up and take it’s own power: we average peeps.
Yup. The rest of us. The rank and file, as it were. The NOT 1% of Americans who just want to get on with life minus all the drama and violence.
So, within this unpleasant and difficult context, I’d like to offer my thoughts on fixing our ailing Internet. Now, I’m not going to suggest my ideas can fix all our woes, but a better foundation for our public internet can go a long way towards healing the rifts dividing and disrupting all our lives. So, let’s kick this proverbial pig.
A short horse tale | Short Fiction
MERRY FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS, that’s craaaaaaaazy lookin’! Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash
One day long ago, a horse I was fond of came to me and bit my arm, breaking the skin.
As blood seeped from the wound I asked, “Why did you bite me.”
The stallion shook its proud head, stamped its powerful hooves, and whinnied, “Because I can, small human.”
“That is sad,” I replied.
“Picking yourself up by your own bootstraps” is stupid.
What even are bootstraps? I’ll keep this brief. I’m particularly fond of this tidy explainer from Etymonline, a language etymology website:
How to use an elevator
A bank of elevators in the lobby of a skyscraper. Photo by Edwin Chen on Unsplash
It happens all the time. You’re walking along, getting stuff done, and an elevator comes into the equation. Now what?