Tag: Chris Aldrich

Sunday Paper - Cancel Culture, Fujifilm X-Pro 3, Blogroll

Interesting stuff I found on the web this week.

I dislike the holier-than-thou attitude of Cancel Culture.

"This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically 'woke' and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly. The world is messy, there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids. And share certain things with you."Barack Obama

Thom Hogan, true to his nature, gives us his unfiltered opinion of the Fujifilm X-Pro 3. I think it's spot on. Emphasis mine.

It appears that Fujifilm has a clear design bias in the X-Pro series toward folk who used old rangefinder cameras and don't want to spend time in the menus or even reviewing images on the camera. That audience is, at this point, getting old. Fujifilm also seems to be saying that this same audience isn't all that interested in one of the primary advantages that kicked the digital camera adoption into high gear, that big rear LCD.

Each big "breakthrough" in camera tech that generated a growth spurt in ILC solved a clear user problem. Automatic metering solved the user problem of setting the right exposure. Autofocus solved the user problem of putting focus in the right spot. DSLRs solved the problem of not seeing your results instantly so that you could understand what you might still need to change.

The hypothesis behind the X-Pro design is that there is a group of photographers who know exactly what they're doing and don't need or want to see results most of the time. Call them the Totally Secure-in-What-I'm-Doing Shooters. Okay, maybe, but how many of those folk are there actually? And are they really that secure? Are they not chimping at all? To me, the change in rear display adds another clumsiness to an already somewhat awkward camera.Thom Hogan

On his Following page, Chris Aldrich mau have created the longest blogroll in history.

Welcome to the IndieWeb John.

I’m 32 years old today. Born in 1987, I’m right in the middle of of the Millennial generation. I came of age at the same time as the Internet. When I was a kid, my Dad was part of the computer science faculty at the technical school in my small hometown. This meant we had a computer in my house before most families did. My Dad would bring those off white color desktops computers home when he had extra work to do, and he’d let me play games on it when he wasn’t using it.John H. Sheridan

Don’t just Google it!

Don’t just Google it! First, let’s talk! by Jon Udell

Asking questions in conversation has become problematic. For example, try saying this out loud: “I wonder when Martin Luther King was born?” If you ask that online, a likely response is: “Just Google it!” Maybe with a snarky link: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=when was martin luther king born?

Asking in conversation is frowned upon too. Why ask us when you could ask Siri or Alexa to ask Google?

There’s a kind of shaming going on here. We are augmented with superpowers, people imply, you’re an idiot to not use them.

When I was younger my parents bought a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I supposed they got tired of answering my incessant questions. With a shelf of information at my disposal, they resorted to "Look it up!". I think "Google It" is a modern version of that phrase.

Looking something up because you need an exact answer for a paper, etc. makes sense. But I agree with Jon that the "Just Google it!” response has become a barrier to conversation.

I use a mapping app when I am travelling to unfamiliar places and being lost is costly. I don't use a mapping app for my hikes and walks in unfamiliar parks. If I use a mapping app on my hikes with my wife, I would miss out on conversations with my wife and seeing all the wonderful things around me.

I am grateful to be augmented by escalators, GPS wayfinders, and tuners. But I want to use these powers in ways that complement my own.

via BoffoSocko.

User Interface to Indicate Posting Activity

User Interface to Indicate Posting Activity by Chris AldrichChris Aldrich (Boffo Socko)

Today I saw a note that led me to the Internet Archive which I know has recently had a redesign. I’m not sure if the functionality I saw was part of this redesign, but it’s pretty awesome. I’m not sure quite what to call this sort of circular bar chart given what it does, but circular widthmap seems vaguely appropriate.

Instead of using color gradations to indicate a relative number of posts, the UI is measuring things via width in ever increasing concentric circles. The innermost circle indicates the root domain and successive levels out add additional paths from my site. Because I’m using dated archive paths, there’s a level of circle by year (2019, 2018, 2017, etc.) then another level outside that by months (April 2019, March 2019, etc.), and finally the outermost circle which indicates individual posts. As a result, the width of a particular year or month indicates relatively how active that time frame was on my website (or at least how active Archive.org thinks it was based on its robot crawler.)

I enjoyed the idea of these heatmaps and charting. I added the sparkline graph last week after I saw them on Chris's website. I may create a separate web site page to keep these. I don't know how useful they are, but they are just cool. I would also love a way to display some of the JetPack graphs.

These are the yearly JetPack stats from 2010, the year Automattic first offered the, to 2019.

2013 was the best year for this website.

But I get more "responses" that I did in earlier years. I suspect more of these are from semantic responses on other platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram since. It's, and the time I started using some of the IndieWeb software.

Below is the Internet Archive graph for 2018, compared to 2012. Traffic has fallen off.

2013 Internet Archive Circular Widthmaps
Graph
2018 Internet Archive Circular Widthmaps