Excursions

Social media tricks me into thinking I’ve connected with other humans when really I have only acknowledged their existence. It is not enough.

@cygnoir words this perfectly, that’s primary reason why am no longer involved in such banal interactions

🎵 Such a creative track this - Efflux of Time by Aditi Ramesh.

Every time I listen to the Best of the Week playlist on Apple Music, I realise how different my choice of music is. I rarely like a song in there. Applies to any trending playlist for that matter.

Great trailer for Westworld Season 2. Fitting background music to an impactful utterance of the message🤩

“But this world is a lie. This world needs to die.”

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You know the best way to spread a bit of positivity around? Greet people in the morning. I have realised it works, so I’ve resolved to greet the support staff every morning.

Puzzles them momentarily, but it’s gratifying to see their lips spread out into a smile next.

It’s promising to see when humanity puts its difference aside to help out an animal in trouble. Yesterday, was one such showcase when a tired & scared cat was rescued by some of us. Some known, a lot unknown.

Keeps my hopes alive we will not burn the world down in our hatred.

@colinwalker Sure. For me, when I referred to long posts, I meant ones a bit refined, independent posts - not from continuous stream of thoughts. For example, I write some fictions/reviews at my blog. Can’t convince myself to keep in same timeline.

So finally managed to open-source the enhanced theme on my site. More about the overall setup here. Still need to work on webmentions display - some inspirations from @colinwalker’s blog.

This is such a great post benchmarking Hugo against Jekyll. The faster build times was extractly the reason I went ahead with Hugo.

At times, it is useful to not wait to get the perfect code base before checking in, especially on branches. There are can be further refinements, but at least the code’s out there. Also works as an added incentive to improve, if something indeed is broken.

🎵 Now Playing Free Fallin’ - such a great song.

What is it with the latest websites that the “Request Desktop Site” just doesn’t work? I have hardly seen any website respond with what I want - those who do are clearly with some old design.

There was a time recently when I seriously considered buying a Windows. Needed an Air, but not the Air in its current form (thanks Apple). However I have realised even my 6 year old Pro works way better for me than current ultrabooks. So am back to waiting - your move Apple.

You stay late, you screw up your mornings. You don’t, well, you anyway screw up the mornings. So the choice’s pretty clear most of the time.

“You’re killing me with your eyes But with your smile you revive” 🎵

Sentimental Trick

Cleaning your code to make it ready for open source or to put it out in public is always such a tricky task. You spew so much mess when you are the only user of the code.

Brent Simmons wrote a great post on why micro.blog is not another App.net. And I completely agree with him. I do want to add a couple of aspects which I believe lends it a better chance to succeed.

Brent has clearly articulated on why micro.blog is different, especially the key parts below.

And so everyone who follows me on Micro.blog sees my blog posts, and I see theirs. Simple.

And anyone who wants to could just read my blog in an RSS reader instead. All good, all open.

If the web is a river, Micro.blog is water, where Twitter and Facebook are dams.

I believe that is also where lies the biggest differentiator for micro.blog. After all, the posts are on one’s personal website too (I would say they exists primarily on the website first). Not locked in some silo. So in way, micro.blog acts as a feed reader for people to discover and follow posts. With an added layer of interaction around them. Every aspect based on open IndieWeb principles. Of course, I am oversimplifying, but it makes it analogous to how people have understood web.

An additional aspect that I think @brentsimmons did not extend the argument to is around adoption. For any platform to succeed it is important that a community of entusiastic adopters join. More importantly, they stay actively involved in using and improving the platform. I think with app.net this aspect was clearly missing — it managed to address the first, but it just couldn’t be different enough from Twitter to take care of later. So it had many users, but hardly any active ones. Eventually, it got crushed under the networking effect of Twitter.

I believe that is not the case with Micro.blog. Fact that one can continue to write on his own website and still be involved in the platform for interaction just makes it a good sell — especially for the proponents of open web like me. We are already seeing the early signs of that — the community is building up, staying active and involved. And it keeps growing (with more prominent developers joining in). So here’s hoping we would finally have all that was good in 2000’s web, adopted for consumption habit of 2018.

#micro.blog #opinion

I guess it’s the seasons of new bots signing up on twitter. Suddenly a rush of new followers - look clearly to be bots (and of course they have joined recently).

I believe when organisations say AI powers each of their offerings/products, they use the term way too leniently. Not every problem needs AI to be addressed. I guess it is more to create a perception - one of adopting cutting-edge tech. Amazon too just joined the club.

“What would make more sense to me is that Amazon converts the latter into a marketplace where PBMs, insurance administrators, distributors, and pharmacies have to compete to serve employees.” - Ben Thompson

So AWS for health then?

🎵The whole playlist is stunning — has taken me through so much of tiring hours. Coffee Break

Steven Sinofsky, in response to an interesting (and hopefully promising) note from Axios, again raised the long debated point.

Adding touch to OS X would bound to be disappointing. Plenty examples of this challenge. Ultimately the use case for touch on legacy desktop OS is minimal. BUT you can’t run iOS without touch and it remains a huge challenge to have a multi-modal API..

I have always been on the side of touch being useless on desktops/laptops. But proponents of this feature have disagreed, putting forth many justifications and success stories, even if anecdotal, with Windows 10 Ultrabooks. Even though I am rarely convinced, I can appreciate how touch can come handy for some activities - mainly clicks and scrolls — especially since iPad with Bluetooth keyboard nullified benefits of laptops in some situations for me.

I believe the request from the proponents to Apple is to not make a decision for the end user, not attempt to identify purpose for, or lack thereof, touch. Put it in, let users benefit if they think they can. Unfortunately, I do not think Apple ever introduces an interface to a platform without their justification for and user story behind it.

These are such great captures of the lunar eclipse from yesterday. Of course, not captured by me - wish I could identify and credit the original poster.

On one of the recent episodes of “Reconcilable Differences”, John Siracusa and Merlin Mann had an interesting conversation on who would make them feel starstruck. Especially they wondered -

Who do you wish you could meet and why? What would you say to Steve Jobs in an elevator or Bill Murray on a plane?

And of course, that sent my mind on a drive. Who would I want to meet? I think one big factor deciding that would be for whom meeting me will not be a burden. It clearly rules out all the musicians, tired of all the ad-hoc post-show crooning requests. It rules out most of the sports celebrities, already tired, looking out for relaxation. Film celebrities, a complete no.

I think people I would be most comfortable meeting would be the ones not too big of celebrities, but well respected in what they do — ones whom I admire for what they are and how they conduct themselves.

Podcasters, writers are of course high on that list. Anyway, here goes a short list, those I just want to convey I respect them.

• John Siracusa — I think the meet may make him awkward, but I admire him for his clarity of thought and his expertise to put that in words.

• Leo Laporte — One of the most fun, but equally knowledgable voices I listen to. I admire him for how effortlessly he hosts any topic of discussion. Experience does matter.

• Published writers to whom I just want to convey how unique and different perspective they have to the world around - Fredrik Backman, Christopher Moore, Khaled Hosseini

• Some creative writers I follow on Medium - Lizella Prescott, Nicole Willson

• And those I wish I just had even a selfie with - Roger Federer, Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Jobs, Terry Pratchett.

I don’t think this is a complete list. Rather I believe it would be difficult to put such an extensive list out. Anyway, the least I would do if I ever run into any of the folks I respect is to not make them feel awkward.

“When life gives you lemons, check to make sure they aren’t, in fact, underripe grapefruits. If they’re underripe grapefruits, you’re well and truly fucked.” https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/when-life-gives-you-lemons