Another excuse to post an old-timey typewriter photo. Photo by Min An.
Short: I still haven’t found one.
Longer: The ones I’ve tried so far don’t have the right level of flexibility and customization that I want.
There are a lot of blogging platforms out there and they all excel at letting you put words onto the internet.
But I want more than words. I am a visual person, so I like including photos, images and things. Some blogging sites focus only on words, some allows images with limits, but very few seem to just let you freely mix both with abandon.
I want abandon.
Ghost probably comes the closest, but it’s $9/month (US, so closer to $12 per month for me) and that’s the basic plan, which doesn’t even let you use custom themes.
There’s Blogtastic, which sounds good on paper, but there’s no way to try it out other than paying, and I have enough doubts about performance, etc. to hesitate.
Beyond that is the world of static site generators, but I don’t want to host, configure and deal with backend nonsense. I do enough of that now. I just want to post words and pictures, to do so at reasonable cost and in a way that lets me relatively easily export my work if I decide to pull up stakes.
Summary: I continue to ponder. I am feeling an urge to start some kind of more focused writing project, though. Maybe I should just write a short story. 😛
It may not work for you, but it sure works for me!
Start Windows 11.
Open File Explorer.
Open a tab in File Explorer.
Repeat Step 3 until you have four or five tabs open.
Wait a short time.
Watch as File Explorer freezes, then crashes and restarts.
The good news is it usually restarts. If it doesn’t, press Win + R and enter explore.exe. This will restart File Explorer.
I will add this caveat: I run a lot of apps and background thingies, ranging from PowerToys to Discord, so who knows what dark magic is really making File Explorer upend itself, but whatever it is, it does not seem to like its new tabs being used.
Frank probably made his post in response, but it’s still kind of impressive he got it in when he did, given the article got over 40 pages of comments in about 24 hours.
Myself, I’m using List View now instead of the main Grid view. My issues reflect a lot of what others are saying:
Too much white space (and I see even less of it, since I subscribe and the design takes into account the now-unused ad space), which means a lot more scrolling and a lot less visible content.
Article headers are way too big, both font size and image.
The Grid view commits a huge faux pas by showing a large block of black with white text on it…when you select the Light theme. Not only is this illogical, it’s a legit accessibility issue. Light themes should be light.
Images in circles are small and not particularly easy to scan, which is overall minor.
I knew there would be griping a-plenty when the article about the redesign talked about updating to current design trends (which in many ways are bad and user-hostile). We’ll see where it ends up as they tweak, but history suggests it will be mostly as is and people will just get used to it.
Here’s the Grid view, as seen on the front page (click to see full-size):
That is a lot of dark for a light theme.
The headers on articles in Light view are still dark, too:
This is a 1780×1140 window.
Also, note that despite having my browser window set to 1780×1140 (not counting the address bar, etc.) I have to scroll just to start reading the article text. This seems suboptimal.
We’ll see how it evolves over the next few weeks. I’ll post an update if I remember!
Bonus irony points for this appearing in the link above:
Why would I not pay? It comes down to how I am visiting the site less these days, and the reason for that is a general steering toward clickbait-style content, opinion pieces of dubious value, and an increasing lack of awareness in the people reporting on tech and what is happening. There is also a distinct lack of a critical eye on companies that have long passed the point of getting the proverbial free pass.
EDIT to add more: The redesign they did a while back, just before Dieter Bohn left to join Google, was a horrible mess. Purple text. PURPLE TEXT. It’s still a mess, really, and it has one mode (on the front page)–dark. Too bad if that’s hard on your eyes, it’s hip. They also love embedding X stories and Instagram (which shows nothing if you are not logged into your Instagram account–you have one, right?) And they also repeat stories multiple times on the front page, which feels like hitting the reader on the head repeatedly with a Nerf hammer. Gentle, but annoying.
Plus, I’ve been engaged in The Culling for a few years now, and having one less site to read would be no big thing. Sorry, Verge!
But to be fair, The Verge does have good writing, as well, and they’ve occasionally experimented with the design of some stories in ways a site like Ars Technica (see below) never has. That’s good! It’s just not enough, overall.
EDIT, Part 2: I wanted to add that I am willing to pay for sites. I have subscribed to Ars Technica for several years now–they remove ads for paid subs, but even better, the design takes advantage of the ad-free space and everything flows better, even compared to using an ad blocker. But mainly, I support the site because they produce lots of articles I enjoy, the discussion is good (and the comments system isn’t atrocious, unlike The Verge’s).
This is enough icons to fill about six and a half rows. Eying it now, I’d say it covers about 20% of my very cool-looking Mars wallpaper–so it could be worse. Roughly five times worse, if my incredible math skills haven’t failed me. Still, it’s clear I’ve become lazy and turned the desktop into a dumping ground for all kinds of junk.
Or have I?
Well, yes. Yes, I have. But there’s also a practical reason. The desktop is always right there, so it’s easy to grab a file from it, rather than rooting around in File Explorer. But I could, of course, clean up all these files after I’ve made use of them (they are typically screenshots or other things I only need to keep handy in the moment, not forever and ever). This is where the lazy part comes in.
I’m going to clean them up right now. I will insert simulated time below and report the results.
…
…
Well, that took longer than expected, but the final result is:
A bunch of files moved to appropriate folders
A bunch of files deleted
Only two icons remain on the desktop, one of which is the Recycle Bin
File Explorer also crashed toward the end of the clean-up, possibly because I had the temerity to have about five tabs open.
In all, success! Now to get just as organized off the computer.
UPDATE, The Next Day: Turned on the PC this morning (it is running Linux Mint at the moment) and the left monitor (HDMI) was working normally. When I powered on the right monitor (DisplayPort, but different cable), it was flashing and not working, so same behavior as before. It eventually went dark after 5-10 minutes. I turned the monitor off, then back on again and it started up normally. This suggests the cable is either not the issue or I indeed have two bad DP cables. I may try going full HDMI before the end of the day to see what happens tomorrow.
For a while now, I have been experiencing some weirdness with my displays. I have two 27″ monitors, both the same model, connected as follows:
PC: DisplayPort
Mac: HDMI
The weirdness does not happen on the Mac, so it seems related to DisplayPort (DP) somehow (maybe), but the cause could be:
Windows 11
Bad DP cable
Bad video card
Bad monitor
So far, I have determined the following:
Windows 11
Bad DP cable (maybe–see below)
Bad video card
Bad monitor
Because the issue happens in Linux Mint, which is like the anti-Windows, it doesn’t seem to be an OS issue. What exactly is happening, you ask? Several things, each horrible in its own special way!
The right monitor will sometimes glitch out after being turned on in the morning. The screen will flicker madly, and then sometimes lose signal altogether. If left alone, it eventually will start working normally. Usually rebooting the PC will also fix it.
Sometimes both monitors will lose the DP signal entirely and just go blank. I don’t know if the signal recovers on its own in this situation, but some testing suggests that if it does, it takes longer than I’m willing to wait (hours, at least).
Something I just noticed today: The DP and HDMI (to Mac) connectors on the back of the right monitor will get very warm, even hot, after a while. They remain cool (normal) on the left monitor. This, along with a dead pixel on the right monitor, leads me to think the right monitor is ailing, even if it isn’t the ultimate culprit.
Tonight I lost the DP signal on the left monitor, which is unusual, but it happened after swapping DP cables, so maybe there is a bad cable. I have cast the possibly bad DP cable aside, but don’t have a spare one that will reach to replace it, so right now the PC is connected with a combo of DP and HDMI. The DP cable that is now connected to the right monitor is the one previously connected to the left, so it may be good. Or “good.” But as noted above, I’ve sometimes lost signal on both monitors, which would mean two bad cables (theoretically possible) or, more likely, a bigger piece of hardware has gone awry. Or gremlins and gnomes are involved.
Anyway, I’ll see what happens, but for the moment both monitors are working and nothing seems to be getting super hot (yet). I will shut the monitors off when I go to bed and see what horrors await me in the morning when I turn them back on.
The best case scenario is that it is just a bad DP cable. The worst case is pretty much anything else, because both the monitor and video card would be very expensive to replace.
Computers are fun1They are! It’s actually rare for me to have hardware issues, so it’s especially annoying when they happen, particularly when the cause is uncertain..
UPDATE, September 27, 2024: Fixed some details. Also, here is a longish piece by Josh Collinsworth that covers the whole sorry affair in detail. The only thing missing is Mullenweg's announcement to give WP Engine a four-day "reprieve", written in the same churlish tone as everything else he's put out recently. I would not invite this guy to your next birthday party.
It seems that a dispute has erupted between WordPress and WP Engine, a company that makes use of WordPress in ways that the WordPress founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg apparently does not like. There are cease and desist letters, lawyers and all that involved now.
This has led to a couple of unusual entries in the normally quiet WordPress Events and News section of my blog’s dashboard, as seen below.
Clicking the links (you can’t click them in the image, sorry!) will lead to the WP founder saying mean things about WP Engine, even calling it a “cancer.” He had threatened to bad mouth WP Engine at a major public WP event (ironically sponsored in part by WP Engine) if WP engine didn’t share some of their sweet lucre with him through some vaguely defined licensing something-or-other that Matt appeared to have invented very recently. WP Engine asked for more time, Matt took that as no and the bad-mouthing took place). It’s ugly all around.
And what this person–the CEO and founder of WordPress–has done has made people start to question the actions of WordPress as an organization, and how much it can be trusted moving forward. It takes a long time to build a good reputation, but only moments to ruin one.
I was already revisiting my (ever)quest to move my blogging, and this is…helping. I’m not sure if that’s the outcome Matt Mullenweg was looking for.
The diary program I use for my journaling is Diarium (yes, I’ve talked about its unfortunate name before). It’s available on pretty much every platform, save Linux (and web). Unlike many people, I don’t write in the diary on my mobile devices, so I’m usually using the Windows or Mac version. Both have slight differences in UI, but generally work the same.
One key difference is fonts. The Windows version lets you use any font you want. I am using the new MS Office font, Aptos, because I like the way it looks. The Mac version only offers a small subset of fonts and I have no idea if this is just the default setup for any Mac program and easier to program or what, because other apps, such as Affinity Designer, will show you all fonts.
My point, though, is that when a program gives me a choice of fonts, I want access to every font available. If I want to write my journal in Papyrus or Comic Sans, let me! The Mac version of Diarium won’t let me and it makes me sad. 🙁 (I would use Aptos there, too.)
Anyway, this is my plea to app-creating wizards and gnomes: Always let the users choose from any fonts they have installed. It’s the nice thing to do. Also, make a Linux version, or at least make the Windows version behave nicely under Linux.
I realized I hadn’t used my LinkedIn account for many years, and rarely at all.
I came to this realization because news began spreading today that Microsoft decided to use everyone’s LinkedIn accounts to train generative AI–by opting people in without telling them.
So with a few seconds of reflection (all that was merited), I closed my account. In two weeks it will be permanently gone, or perhaps “gone” because I have zero trust that these big tech companies actually purge data or honour the requests made by users.
To the uninitiated, the title may make no sense. To me, it’s two of the preset display modes for my Asus monitors. The one that sits to the left has also seemed brighter and the whites whiter (now I sound like a laundry detergent ad) and for a long while I just left it all alone because both monitors were using DisplayPort and had the exact same settings.
Both used Racing Mode, which provided the least objectionable selection of gaudy, oversaturated colours. Or so I thought. On a whim, I selected Cinema Mode on the more yellowish monitor on the right and lo, the whites now look like they’ve been bleached to heck and back, just the way I like! I made a few other tweaks and now both monitors, using different settings, look roughly the same.
The real issue is likely either some fault in the right monitor, either something ultimately unfixable, or something not easily fixable, like the calibration being off. But for now, both monitors look the same(ish) and that’s good enough for me!
As a bonus (?), colours in Cinema Mode are a lot more…intense. Not necessarily oversaturated, but let’s say they pop a lot more. And I kind of like it. Maybe I’m becoming a more colourful person.
From a techbro billionaire, of course. In this case, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison:
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” Ellison said, describing what he sees as the benefits from automated oversight from AI and automated alerts for when crime takes place. “We’re going to have supervision,” he continued. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person.”
Because there’s no way a 24/7 surveillance state wouldn’t be abused by those in power. No way at all!
