Excursions

Recently, I have been seriously considering moving my Wordpress account to a paid plan. It hosts my old blog with posts from ages ago — it currently acts as an archive of the un-migrated posts for me.

There is a reason why I am a bit itchy with my writing workflow. I am struggling to get stuff written across systems, mainly mobile and desktops, at home and work, with drafts kept in sync. Sure, I can use Dropbox as my file store and access the draft posts using iA Writer or other Markdown text editors. However, I am very particular with not signing into and linking anything personal on my work machine, so this workflow does not work at work.

I would have really liked something that is web based. I have been, since long, trying to find a micropub client with a satisfying writing experience for long form posts, along with drafts support. I still haven’t found one. Neither have my attempts to just create one ground up gone anywhere, mainly for the need for multiple working drafts.

I do have a Netlify CMS setup for my main Hugo driven website. However, though it works fine from a desktop, it has a terrible experience on mobile.

Wordpress solves this particular problem for me. I have come to realize finally that it has a nice, clean writing interface on desktop. And with its stable mobile app, the workflow is manageable on mobile too.

But, boy I am ruined by markdown - I can’t write in “Rich Text” any more. Plus, I can’t host my posts on a website which does not have the Indieweb principles baked in. I am aware that Wordpress has a IndieWeb plugin. However, one needs a business account to install plugins. And that’s too much of a cost to sign up for this casual experiment.

So my search for the online writing interface with support for sync and drafts and satisfactory interface on desktop and mobile continues. With Wordpress, it’s so close, but far.

I am tired of people making fun of a feature just because they cannot think of a use for that. This attitude recently came to the fore with Apple’s introduction of “slofies” - the slow-motion selfies. The call for “stop trying to make slofies happen” was loud and clear from the tech community. Apparently, “no one else wants to use it” because we do not want to use it.

That’s a terrible take. Sure, may be the feature can be graded low on the “usefulness” parameter, but it stands high on the fun scale. And our smartphones today are the most personal devices we carry around with us today, and that is not just because they are useful. They are equally fun too.

So stop mocking anything that you will not use. Selfies. Crazy filters. Slow-motion videos. Loop and Bounce effects - the boomerangs. They all make these dull devices a lot more fun. And their fun factor is what makes them sell in masses.

I had no idea that there exists something called Nation Play-Doh Day. It does, and it is today. This “toy” always fascinates me. This also reminded me today of a crazy, rainy evening from my childhood when we friends deferred on not one, but many activities frowned upon.

There are so many of these apparently great films of the 21st century that I haven’t seen yet. I have seen few, but they are mostly from before 2010. I can see a correlation with the changing priorities in my life. And I forgot Gladiator belongs to the current century ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder what’s the best way to make note of the fleeting thoughts, say adding an item to a list of things that one needs to do. I know my memory is not my friend here — it gobbles stuff, but fails to let it out timely.

Digital methods are easy to use, convenient, but are unnatural. You lose touch, context, of the written words after some time. They end up being a plain dump of words with no background.

I can capture more context with analog methods — a quick sketch or the current location — but it isn’t convenient. Either I do not have a piece of paper handy or I can’t stop and capture the thought (being in middle of traffic, let’s say) right at that moment.

I am waiting for the day the digital assistants would be smarter to help capture such thought. Today they aren’t. First, they can’t be easily summoned — “Ok Google” or “Hey Siri” doesn’t work in middle of traffic, blaring horns or loud chatters.

Second, they are terrible at capturing unformed thoughts. They need structured inputs, which quick notes aren’t. Using digital assistants today is a painful battle between reality and expectations. Former is driven by the technology limitations, later by the out-right spurious promises in the advertisements.

With all said and done though, I have recently - and after enduring lot of pain - learned that heavy reliance on one’s smartphone to lead a structured life is not very sensible to do. There is a chance that it can lead to utter chaos when you don’t have your device on you. It can completely paralyze you for thoughts.

If a website doesn’t function on a browser other than Chrome or with content blocking on, it loses me as a visitor. I am tired of web developers being clumsy — prompting that we won’t serve content because you block ads is one thing. A nonfunctional website reeks callousness.

Recent partial failure of the Indian lunar exploration mission — communication loss with the lander Vikram — made me think how crowded the surface of moon must be.

There have been many such hard and soft landings and crashes on the surface of the moon since way before as part of numerous attempted Moon exploration missions, 137 to be precise. And there is a huge list of “artifical” objects that we have magaed to send on the way to the surface of the Moon. Boy, so much to grasp there. Especially dates. Just look at the first entry on there - Luna 2, “the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, and the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body”. We, as species, complete 60 years of that achievement today. Fascinating!

Humans have left over 187,400 kilograms (413,100 lb) of material on the Moon, and 380 kilograms (838 lb) of Moon rock was brought back to Earth by Apollo and Luna missions. The only artificial objects on the Moon that are still in use are the retroreflectors for the lunar laser ranging experiments left there by the Apollo 11, 14 and 15 astronauts, and by the Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2 missions.

Apple needs to stop being so stingy with the storages they provide. I do not recall they putting much emphasis on their storage plans, on-device or cloud. It’s worrying that they get mocked all around for this and they are fine with it.

We worry about face recognition just as we worried about databases - we worry what happens if they contain bad data and we worry what bad people might do with them.

A great post by Benedict Evans where he compares our fears around usage of facial recognition technology, and in extension the AI and data hoarding, to the fears we had when data gathering and analysis capabilities of databases was being introduced. Some comparisons are indeed apt. And some fears, of course misguided and misplaced.

Gathering data inherently isn’t bad — it is the fact that it enables bad people to use it in bad manner that everyone knowledgeable worries about. So, the call for regulating the usage of the data isn’t unjustified. However, the exaggerated and far-fetched fall-outs of data misuses, and the recent own goals by the big corps, like Facebook, Google and others, are just making regulators around the world shoot for the easiest target out there — their ability to collect data.

The challenge here, I think, is to work out the right level of abstraction. When Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme imploded, we didn’t say that Excel needed tighter regulation or that his landlord should have spotted what he was doing - the right layer to intervene was within financial services. Equally, we regulate financial services, but mortgages, credit cards, the stock market and retail banks’ capital requirements are all handled very separately. A law that tries to regulate using your face to unlock your phone, or turn yourself into a kitten, and also a system for spotting loyalty-card holders in a supermarket, and to determine where the police can use cameras and how they can store data, is unlikely to be very effective.

Not justifying either side. But the fact that there is a possible conflict of interest with Google’s Project Zero involvement, given it owns competing platforms from Apple and Microsoft, this kerfuffle was bound to happen. Am surprised it didn’t fall out earlier.