Excursions

★ Liked “The Bullshit Web”

An honest web is one in which the overwhelming majority of the code and assets downloaded to a user’s computer are used in a page’s visual presentation, with nearly all the remainder used to define the semantic structure and associated metadata on the page.

★ Liked “Doing Nothing”

Push your mind out of a rut.

This is important. I need to do this more often.

★ Liked “Dave Winer on the decrentralized web”

I think the “decentralized web” can’t be anything other than the web itself.

Back home after days of travel. It’s always great to be back at home, the “usual stuff” - usualities are welcome.

Folks with blogs on Blot, how do you typically post? Any micropubs? Or is it always save to dropbox from text editors of choice?

★ Liked “The Outline “slams” media for overusing the word”

It’s all about courting our love of sensation; nobody is really getting hurt.

★ Liked “The conventional wisdom about not feeding trolls makes online abuse worse”

The story of the internet has always been the same story: disaffected young men thinking their boorish and cruel behavior was justified or permissible.

And it was always wrong.

★ Liked “‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI alarmingly wrong ”

“Making real progress in AI requires a public discourse that is sober and informed,” Lipton says. “Right now, the discourse is so completely unhinged it’s impossible to tell what’s important and what’s not.”

I hate reading articles on websites with monospaced fonts. It’s ok for code snippets, but please let’s not use them for long form posts. Not sure if it’s even made for that.

I recently received a great feedback and a query from @cygnoir at Micro.blog.

The links you share are so interesting! I especially love that you give a bit of an excerpt. Are you auto-posting these somehow? If so, would you be willing to teach me (or point me in the right direction to learn)?

Yes, I do read a lot of articles on web and share each one I like. And the reason I share them is I want others to read them too. I think it is difficult to convince people just with a title. So I also include an excerpt from the post that may give the readers an idea what the post is about (sample)

For me this usually happens while am on mobile and so it is just isn’t simple to copy and paste. So I have a system worked out on iOS with iA Writer and Workflow apps that allows me to easily post the links with excerpt.

It starts with a template in iA Writer with placeholders for all the relevant sections - date, title, link and content that is to be shared.

--- title : “” date : {date} --- ★ Liked "<a href="{link}" class="u-like-of" rel="like-of">{title}</a>" > {content}

I then have a Workflow which prepares the actual file with this template. I trigger this Workflow from Safari as Action Extension, which runs through the below process.

1. Gets the current URL and puts it into a variable link.
2. Gets the title of the current page and puts it into a variable title.
3. Gets the contents of clipboard and sets it variable content.
4. Gets the current date in required format.
5. Picks up the above template and replaces appropriate placeholders with the actual values fetched earlier.
6. Creates a new markdown file with this content and opens it in iA Writer for further processing. And publish.

This system, though not perfect, works for me currently. I want to simplify it further - mainly using Micropub endpoint. But haven’t got a chance to implement that yet. Till then, I am going to use this one.

I have similar template and Workflow combinations for reply, image, link posts.

Time to be on a train, a rail road trip with family is always fun!

title: “” date : 2018-07-28 14:40:00+05:30 —

Time to be on a train, a rail road trip with family is always fun!

Every wardrobe has that one shirt that uncovers itself after many days, from beneath the pile of new, blot-less clothes and mirrors back the reality to you. The reality that you have been ignoring the most important possession of yours, your health. It just won’t fit anymore.

You reminisce when this was part of your go-to attire. When nothing else looked good on you, nothing else suited you, fitted you, this one shirt always did. And now it doesn’t. As if it never was yours.

It hasn’t changed much. You, on the other hand, have.

So now the choice is yours. You either accept the signal, get back into shape. Or ignore it, pay for the consequences later.

I think it is the same with life. And those forgotten habits, those expressions that had made you look good. That had suited you, defined you.

And that one event that makes you realise you have changed enough that they don’t suit you now.

That’s when you choose.

★ Liked “Juul & its House of Smoke & Horrors” by Om Malik

“And is it an ethical business?,” asks Crunchbase. “We can’t answer the latter question here as we’re not equipped for it.” Yes, you are!

★ Liked “How to close all Safari tabs at once on iPhone and iPad”

All you have to do is long-press the tab button when looking at any Safari page […]

Just long press. Everywhere.

I listened to a couple of microcasts today and I get the lure now. It is easier to share quick thoughts via audio than a written words. And I attempted to record couple of notes in Voice Memo. Yep. I think I may make it work.

★ Liked “No, you probably don’t have a book in you”

Every story is not a book.

★ Liked “Departing Facebook Security Officer’s Memo: ‘We Need To Be Willing To Pick Sides’”

“We need to build a user experience that conveys honesty and respect, not one optimized to get people to click yes to giving us more access,” Stamos wrote. “We need to intentionally not collect data where possible, and to keep it only as long as we are using it to serve people.”

“We need to listen to people (including internally) when they tell us a feature is creepy or point out a negative impact we are having in the world,” the note continued. “We need to deprioritize short-term growth and revenue and to explain to Wall Street why that is ok. We need to be willing to pick sides when there are clear moral or humanitarian issues. And we need to be open, honest and transparent about our challenges and what we are doing to fix them.”

What needs to be done has always been clear. Anyway I think it is good that it is on paper (again). Wish someone worked on it too.

I hate podcasts, because the medium is demanding. It demands so much time from me, demands focused attention to follow along. I wish I didn’t find them so damn useful to keep giving in to the medium’s demands.

But to do so, I have to alter my regular habits to accommodate podcasts in the daily routine. Time that was consumed by music for majority part of my life is taken over by podcasts now. If I have even a minute free, earphones are plugged and I continue what I was listening to. There are times when I question whether the medium actually deserves so much of attention from me.

So every now and then I look and relook at my subscribed podcasts list to decide which podcasts earn their place. I relook at my habits to see what I can change to make this manageable.

• If there is a podcast which I hardly listen to, it’s unsubscribed.
• If there is one whose last episodes I hardly remember, it’s unsubscribed.
• I rarely stay subscribed to podcasts that might talk about the same sets of topics (that means very few tech podcasts).
• I do not want news from the podcasts, I want views, perspectives.
• None with daily episodes. Rather I prefer podcasts that are spread across the week. So if I find that there are multiple (more than 3) podcasts delivering episodes on the same day, few are simply unsubscribed.
• I always listen at 1.2x speed. “Trim Silence” mode is always on in PocketCasts. I do not care of the lost fidelity. I recently tried to let the silence stay on and I felt everyone was deliberately being a slow speaker.
• There is a big reason I use PocketCasts. Overcast is a loved app amongst the tech community and I tried hard to use it. But it just doesn’t respect data usages limits. It either allows to download all episodes every time or not notify about a new episode at all. I, on the other hand, want to look at the episode, read what it’s about and then decide whether to download. PocketCasts’ a lot more flexible.
• I like if the podcasts, especially long ones, do chapters. It’s easier to skip over the topics I just have no interests in.
• I listen to ad reads if they aren’t robotic, if the host believes in the product. That’s least I can do to contribute for their efforts.

I find it fascinating that Bill Gates does not have a feed with full contents of his notes. I wish he was more open now, at least with his notes.

I realised today that Feedbin also supports following Twitter feeds and Podcasts. How usable is this? It really makes me curious, may be it can become one place where I catch up with all the stuff? Any one does that?

This week’s episode of Twit was really fun. Lively debates on varied topic, with logical point of views from smart people. It’s rare that a tech podcast does not regurgitate perspectives on same superficial tech updates.

★ Liked “How to improve Twitter in 2018” by Dave Winer

Make a commitment to developers and make it irreversible. What exactly this means is subject to negotiation. But no one company can do what a medium does. As great a company as Twitter might be, its not something companies were meant to do, imho.

★ Liked “Fascism These Days” by Brent Simmons

What if agents in the Secret Service or FBI begin quietly talking to bloggers or tweeters who express an anti-Trump point of view? No law needed. No take-down notice. It’s just agents doing their jobs.

Would you keep blogging after having a quiet meeting with a couple armed men who — politely and calmly — explain that they’re just checking to make sure you’re not a threat to national security?

Would you even tell anyone about the meeting?