Microblog | Farai

Published: 4 Feb 2023 at 22:40 SAST
Tags
#digital-discontent
See Subscribe a lot, consume a little on rachsmith.com
A month ago, I was happy that I reduced the posts in my RSS reader from 2,200 to 640 within 2 days. Guess what? It’s back to over 1,000 entries again 🙃🎉.
In general, I’ve amassed a huge content backlog that I’ll never get through unless I become chronically unemployed again¹ and I did nothing else during that time. I was delighted then to come across this post by Rach Smith on how shee likes to go through content which is by subscribing to many sources (preferably via RSS) and picking what to consume from there.
Sounds obvious but rather than be pressured to consume everything, I just pick out whatever and get to the rest whenever I feel like it and get rid of the things with no appeal to me at all. Think of this as the robustness principle (hence the url) but for the attention economy where you should be conservative in what you do and be liberal in what you accept from others.
1. Dont’ want to be chronically unemployed, but it would be great to structure my life around having a lot of free time to do whatever as if I was. That needs a lot of life planning but it’s ironic how having no money and lots of money means you can do nothing? Like that iconic Office Space scene [VIDEO: 1:40] or the Mexican Fisherman Parable. ↩︎
Published: 3 Feb 2023 at 21:41 SAST
Tags
#nature
On my morning walk, I noticed that this palm tree had these beautiful white and purple strands coming out of it.
On an unrelated note, it’s interesting how image codecs reduced the 11MB file¹ to 85KB while looking great.
1. Technically 3MB but I don’t know how to losslessly convert HEIC efficiently. Bloody Apple. ↩︎
Published: 3 Feb 2023 at 21:16 SAST
Tags
#wtf
#bad-design
#ux
Southwest, why do you insist on using a custom select element? If you’ve asked yourself if you need a custom select and you insist on using one, at least make one which doesn’t suck.
Is there a reason as to why I’d prefer clicking down 200 times to get to Zimbabwe rather than scrolling down to it? It being prettier doesn’t count if it sucks this much shit to use.
Published: 3 Feb 2023 at 21:12 SAST
Tags
#Images
Tech
Hugo
In Hugo v108.0, added an option which would finally let use the <picture>/<source> elements the way I want it to.
Those elements are essential to doing a lot of cool things with images, like specifying different image formats, dark mode images, art direction and more.
What I wanted to do was wrap the markdown image tags in a picture/source element like this:
```
{{% picture %}}
{{% source srcset="cool-tree.webp" type="image/webp" %}}
{{% source srcset="cool-tree.webp" type="image/avif" %}}

![The tree trunk of a palm tree with a bunch of white strangs with purple bumbs burting out of a leaf like thing](cool-tree.jpg)
{{% /picture %}}
```
Issue was that Hugo would wrap the image element in a paragraph, making it invalid. With Hugo v108, you can configure markdown.goldmark.parser.wrapStandAloneImageWithinParagraph to false so that it doesn’t do that, making this technique possible at last.
I have a lot to say about images and Hugo so follow this blog on RSS to hear all about it.
Published: 3 Feb 2023 at 21:12 SAST
Tags
#aviation
#cool
See The Most Disgusting Thing About Airplanes [VIDEO: 12:49] on youtube.com/@FilthTV
Planes are absolutley filthy, especially with all that human skin flowing around the cabin. Props to these folk for doing such a gross yet vital job to keep flying safe.
Published: 11 Jan 2023 at 18:29 SAST Updated: 4 Feb 2023 at 21:56 SAST
Tags
#Images
#AVIF
#perf
Honestly, it took you 5 minutes and maxing my CPU to convert an image, but you did just make a smaller image, you made a better looking one.
In fairness, I probably shouldn’t have used a 6MB, 3000x4000 pixel image, tried to convert it in a web browser with Squoosh, at effort 10. Then again, I couldn’t use the 1MB HEIC file.
I’m working on a more scientific approach so stay tuned for that.
Published: 10 Jan 2023 at 22:18 SAST
Tags
#food
A few weeks back, the creator of the popular Indian-British dish chicken tikka masala, Ali Ahmed Aslam, passed away at 77. Hard to nail a dish to a single inventor, but he has a memorable story and a face so I’ll go along with it.
In his honor, I bought some chicken tikka masala from Vikram’s in Johannesburg, South Africa.
It was great😋.
Excuse the darkness, I didn’t know South Africa had load shedding. Not that I’m unfamilliar with it, just that people here aren’t prepared for it yet.
Published: 6 Jan 2023 at 21:54 SAST Updated: 4 Feb 2023 at 22:03 SAST
Tech
webfeeds
I’ve said this many times but I have too much content in my backlock. Somehow, I got the energy to go through my RSS reader NetNewsWire and reduced the unread posts from 2200 to 640 in 2 days. In faireness, a bunch of feeds just reincluded hundreds of old posts, but I enjoyed reading through what people had to say. I might feature it on this site at some point.
Published: 6 Jan 2023 at 13:44 SAST Updated: 4 Feb 2023 at 21:48 SAST
Tags
#misinformation
#from-the-drafts
I found the YouTube channel Adrian Gray Comedy (featured on This Week’s Thing) who makes fake history videos under the series Forgotten History¹. I saw his video on Elvis Sending Women Insane [1:00] and I was recommended a video of Elvis performing “Hound Dog” on Ed Sullivan [3:38].
Intrigued by his ability to make women swoon, I Googled around to learn more and sure enough, the very video I watched came up unironically.
Sure watching the video will reveal it to be a joke, but I worry that Google can’t understand jokes. Heck, not just jokes. While snippets are usually accurate (to me anyway), there are times when the source material says another thing entirely.
This has me side-eying the search engine big time.
1. I made it creator of the week a while ago, but I lost the post. I’ll republish it once I find it. ↩︎
Published: 10 Dec 2022 at 21:14 SAST
Tags
#Zimbabwe
There have been 3 times within the past week where shops that advertise USD prices don’t actually have them. It’s isn’t much money in the grand scheme of things, but if you say that there’s a deal for $4.75, you can the surprised when people are annoyed that it costs $5.83 at check out.
Yes we know you’re playing tricks with the exchange rate, but every sensible country has a means of correcting prices based on advertising. Why the hell is it my problem that your money laundering system is incapable of doing maths properly?
These are the sort of things that should be reported to a consumer protection authority, but it’s Zimbabwe so it won’t accomplish shit.
“Open for business” my ass.