The picture below is the parking lot at Hume Park. I normally walk through here three days a week, going to and from my run at Burnaby Lake. But focus not on the park or scenery, take a look at the vehicles. What do you notice about them?
There is an assortment of cars, SUVs, plus a truck and a van. What else?
They are all either:
Black
White
Silver
Gray
Some other colour so muted you can’t really tell what it is
When did cars become so incredibly dull-looking? Why does everyone choose a non-colour instead of actual colour? I did some research and for a new vehicle, choosing a real colour (red, blue, etc.) usually only adds a few hundred dollars to the total price, which in terms of monthly payments is virtually unnoticeable. So it can’t be cost.
I asked ChatGPT (because of course I did) and while some of its answers made sense, others were a bit silly or even self-contradictory (they improve visibility?!). Here is a spoiler with its answers:
ChatGPT on people avoiding colourful cars
The choice of vehicle color is influenced by a combination of personal preferences, cultural trends, and practical considerations. While it’s true that neutral tones like white, silver, and black are often more popular than bolder colours like red, blue, or green, there are several reasons for this phenomenon:
1. Resale Value: Neutral colours tend to have broader appeal and can be seen as more timeless, making vehicles with these colours easier to sell in the used car market. Bolder colours might be less attractive to a potential buyer, leading to a longer wait time or a lower resale value.
2. Practicality: Neutral colours like white, silver, and black are often considered more practical because they are less likely to show dirt, scratches, and minor imperfections. They can also be easier to maintain and keep looking clean.
3. Professionalism: Many people choose neutral colours for their vehicles, especially if they use them for work or business purposes. These colours can convey a sense of professionalism and seriousness, which might be important for some individuals.
4. Temperature Control: Lighter colours like white and silver reflect more sunlight and heat, helping to keep the interior of the vehicle cooler. This can be especially important in hot climates.
5. Visibility: Neutral colours tend to blend in better with the environment, making them potentially safer in terms of visibility on the road.
6. Cultural and Social Factors: Different cultures and societies might have preferences for certain colours based on symbolism, cultural norms, or perceptions of luxury. Neutral colours might be associated with elegance and sophistication in some cultures.
7. Personal Taste: While bolder colours can be eye-catching and express individuality, some people prefer the understated and classic look of neutral colours. Others might feel that bolder colours could become tiresome over time or might not match their personal style.
8. Color Trends: Automotive manufacturers often follow color trends based on market research and consumer preferences. If neutral colours are in vogue, manufacturers might produce more vehicles in those colours.
9. Customization Options: Some individuals prefer to keep their vehicles in neutral tones because they plan to customize them with aftermarket modifications or wraps. Neutral colours serve as a blank canvas for these customization options. It’s important to note that while neutral colours are often more popular, the choice of vehicle color is ultimately a personal decision. Bolder colours can be a great way to stand out and showcase individuality, and some people do opt for them for precisely those reasons.
I think the ones where the AI comes closest is in terms of blending in and wanting to conform. Car companies probably push bland colours, too, because it’s easier to make 1,000 white cars than to make 250 white cars, 250 red cars, 250 green cars and a couple of hundred covered in polka dots. I just find it a little sad and off-putting. I know, this is the definition of a first world problem and cars are destroying the planet, etc. But they could at least look pretty while destroying the planet!
For the past week or so, my brain has just not been cooperating with this blog. Giving myself permission to write about anything I want here was liberating, but even that freedom hasn’t been enough the past few days. I stare at the blinking cursor, and then I feel my mind drifting off, not to some great blog topic, but just weird little mundane things and thoughts. Nothing that I’d want to share in this space.
I do have a backup–a collection of blog ideas saved in Obsidian. But a lot of the topics I’ve jotted down no longer appeal. A lot of them are Apple kvetching, and I exceeded my quota on that at least 50 years ago.
So I end up doing these meta posts.
Oh, I just thought of a topic: Mastodon clients!
Mastodon is the only social media I use semi-regularly right now and I like it because:
No ads
No “reels” or other unavoidable short form videos
No algorithm–I only see the people/orgs I choose to follow
Not overwhelming. I like that I can easily keep up with what I’m following. It feels cozy and approachable.
I also don’t visit Mastodon on mobile. It’s strictly on my Mac or PC. On the Mac, I use the Mona app, which is a one-time purchase (hooray) and works well. On Windows, I use an alternate web version currently in alpha called Elk. It improves on the web interface and is pretty good, with only a few minor shortcomings. Still, I’d rather use a dedicated client, but all the Windows clients seem to have some flaw, the most common of which is they are ugly as butt. Windows apps don’t have to look ugly, but so many do. Every Mastodon client I’ve tried has been butt ugly. So I use Elk.
I don’t know why, exactly, the odds of a Mac app looking better than a Windows app is so high, but I suspect that it has something to do with the Mac GUI always being “good” and remaining fairly consistent over the years, with few dramatic changes. There’s a polished kind of consistency.
With Windows, well, just look at the GUI for different flavours:
Windows 1.0. I mean, yikes. But it was also 1985.
Windows 3.0. Pretty slick for the time, but crude by today’s standards.
Windows 95. Pretty decent, really.
Windows XP. Changed pretty much all UI elements in a way some liked, but others didn’t, feeling it was too “cartoony.”
Vista. Ignoring the initial quality of the OS, it again completely revamped the look, giving everything a pseudo-3D effect and having a glossy, reflective sheen to it.
Windows 8. Another complete change, flattening everything and subbing in garish colours and simplified icons.
Windows 10. A hybrid of 7 and 8 that reverses some of 8’s design.
Windows 11. A refinement of 10 that again changes the look of many elements, though perhaps not as dramatically as before.
Basically, if everyone followed the design language of Windows 11, apps would look pretty good. But a lot of apps seem to be weird hybrids of older versions of the OS and that’s when you get butts meeting the ugly.
Oh well. In the end, we’re seeing fewer native apps on both Windows and Mac as more devs use tools like Electron to make apps that look and feel the same (and don’t feel particularly native) on all platforms. I guess that’s the future.
I’ve seen variations of the comic below, which deals with the age-old question, “If you claim to be tolerant, why don’t you tolerate the intolerant?” I’ve including it here, so I have this as a reference for myself and, possibly, for others.
WordPress 6.3 adds footnotes and the ability to style captions. Let’s see how they work!
Here is a sentence that ends in as footnote1. And here’s another using the Modern Footnotes plugin1I prefer footnotes that are inline that you can click, read, then dismiss, as they don’t interrupt the flow (man).
And now a photo with a styled caption:
This is the worst shot of a pigeon I’ve ever taken. I mean, the most artsy.
Aw, it appears I can’t do the one thing I actually wanted–change the size of the caption text. Boo.
In conclusion: I’ll probably never use these features, but someone will and it’s good they are here now, for those people.
These appear to be traditional footnote types that only appear at the bottom of a post. I prefer the inline notes. ↩︎
Photo by author. I wonder if the next edition will be SAD HEART SHAPES.
When I was a kid, I ate candy for breakfast. By which I mean cereal where sugar was the first five ingredients. Some of them even had sugar right in the name, like Sugar Smacks. Mmm, Sugar smacks…
As an adult, I try to be a little more sensible with cereals, so I bade farewell to my buddies Cap’n Crunch and Count Chocula. To be fair, skipping Cap’n Crunch has saved me from countless mouth lacerations.
One of my go-to healthier picks now is Cheerios, which is recent years has expanded into a Cheerios Empire, with more flavours than you can shake a stick made out of whatever passed for those weird crunchy “marshmallows” in Count Chocula. I have not tried every flavour, and the sugar content ranges from almost none to first five ingredients.
Here is how I rank Cheerios, of the ones I’ve tried:
Multigrain Cheerios. This is probably the closest to pure Cheerios while adding a bit more variety. It’s also the lowest in sugar to the original. It tastes good, but not so good that I will eat half a box at one sitting.
Original Cheerios. Something about the blandness of having nothing added accentuates the simple oat flavour. As a bonus, it has almost no sugar and because its flavour is merely pleasant, I don’t gorge on it.
Chocolate Cheerios. Not as high in sugar as you’d think. It is sweet, but not overly so and, of course, you end up with chocolate milk in the bowl. Yum! An occasional treat.
Honey Nut Cheerios. I actually haven’t tried this in years, but I remember it being sweet, but not too sweet. I may have had a less discerning palate back in the olden days, though. It ranks lower because of the sugar/honey content, and I haven’t felt compelled to try it again due to that.
Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. I finally tried these recently. The sugar content is on the higher side. It tastes heavy, somehow. I would not gorge on this, nor do I think I would try it again. If it was Cheerios with a hint of apple and cinnamon flavouring (like, aimed at adults), I’d probably like it a lot more.
There are a billion other flavours out there, because it seems like they’re throwing a lot out there to see what sticks, but these are the ones I’ve tried.
For the cereal curious, the other cereals I eat semi-regularly are:
Crispix (low sugar, light and crunchy)
Reese Peanut Butter Puffs (guilty pleasure, but lower in sugar than you might think)
Yesterday I started tweaking and experimenting with menus on the blog again and along the way, something went weirdly and spectacularly wrong. For a time, the site looked like this:
Would you care for links to every page from the last 18 years? At the top of the site? Good news!
Some of the pages linked in the header, like Short story names, were not even set to be publicly viewable, but somehow ended up displaying, anyway.
I did a restore via Dreamhost, which was imprecise (you don’t pick a specific restore point, just a vague timeframe), but worked, save for three images I had to manually recover. Once I repaired the damage, I went back to looking at kittens on the internet and pondered what to do going forward.
My site is actually quite old for a blog. I started it 18 (!) years ago, in February 2005. Blogs were kind of a big deal back then. Through many themes and redesigns, the blog has mustered on, but along the way it has accumulated piles of cruft, weird bits of code and parts of it feel like they will collapse if you touch them even ever-so-gently.
Yesterday’s menu fiasco has cooled me on mucking with the design for now, but it has got me thinking about what to do moving forward. I am undecided, but can rule out a few things:
Going back to coding HTML and CSS by hand, like it’s 1999
Leaving the site as-is indefinitely
Giving up, curling into a fetal position, and lapsing into a permanent fugue state about “the good old days”
Hopefully the next update about this blog will read less like an autopsy report.
I have started experimenting with bringing some menus back to my blog, so my photo galleries and other things are visible again. I’ve also slapped in a smaller temporary site logo. All of this may change, but for now, enjoy three sets of photos I took at Reifel, plus a direct link once again to Angry Carrot vs. Quirky Bastards.
UPDATE, a short time later: I’ve already moved the menus from the top to an item in the right sidebar and ditched the temporary site logo. Who knows what I’ll do next!
At the time, I was checking the usual sites irregularly, as I’d switched to a bedtime routine of reading actual books. Since then, irregularly has become rarely. I just haven’t missed Instagram and Facebook, so this has been a kind of unintentional culling.
The reasons for why I haven’t missed them are summed up pretty much in the post linked above: Once I broke the routine of checking in every night, I found the content was just not interesting enough for me to tolerate the endless piles of “reels” and ads. Instead, I have been spending a bit more time on Mastodon, which has no ads (by design) and no algorithm (also by design). I only see what I want to see. I follow people, then unfollow if they don’t make my socks roll up and down. That is my bar now–you must magically animate my socks or off with you.
It’s worked out decently so far.
Part of me does kind of miss posting my photos regularly, but they were only seen by a handful of people anyway, and now I can focus on posting billions of photos to my blog instead! I think in some small way this may have slightly improved my mental health, too (not visiting FB and IG much, not the posting billions of photos to my blog part, though who can say for sure!)
In September of 1986 I turned 25 years old. A song by Wang Chung was also released that month called “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” At the time, I thought it was pretty dumb. It even had this eye-rolling lyric where the band invokes itself as the personification of fun:
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody Wang Chung tonight
I was a very serious person at age 25.
Today I realize that while this is a confection–a song you dance (and have fun) to, it’s also a brilliantly executed pop gem. The whole thing just moves (or slaps in the hipster parlance of 2023).
The official video is probably not a great choice for people prone to epileptic seizures, but this live version from 1987 not only captures the energy of the recorded song, it demonstrates that Wang Chung was a fantastic live band. And now that I am, ahem, not 25, I can better appreciate what they did.
I suggest we all Wang Chung a little tonight1You don’t need to DRESS like Wang Chung tonight, but if you can pull off 1980s fashion in the 2020s, rock your socks off.
Yes, it is raining today and that is noteworthy, as it has been very dry. It still doesn’t feel as weird or bad as last summer, though wildfires across BC are worse. I remember last summer having a surprising number of 30C+ days, and it was super humid from start to end. This year humidity has been low or normal (possibly due to El Niño) and while it’s been warm, we’re seeing high temperatures that are only may be a degree or higher than the norm. We may have had more 30C+ days in May than in July so far (and the forecast suggests it will stay that way).
Weather is weird. And getting weirder.
Thank you for attending my mini climate change TED Talk.
A perfectly cromulent forecast for the rest of July 2023
