Tag: blogging

Posted on
by

Sophos reports that Facebook is testing a feature to hide new posts from your timeline so they don’t feel so permanent. Of course they’re still searchable until you actually delete them, so they’re still permanent in that sense.

What’s odd: Facebook posts don’t feel permanent to begin with, even though they effectively stick around forever.

Thinking about it, two things make an internet post feel permanent to me:

  1. Can I count on it sticking around?
  2. Can I count on finding it again?

Facebook, despite a lot of improvements over the years, is a mess. The newsfeed algorithm means you can’t just keep scrolling back. The timeline view isn’t reliably complete. Search is kind of a crap shoot. Don’t get me started on trying to find a particular old post on Twitter!

And that’s dealing with sites I can expect to stay online over time. A post on a forum, or a comment on someone else’s blog, or any social network could easily vanish in someone’s server crash or business shutdown.

If I can’t count on being able to find what I post a few years down the line, it feels like it’s temporary, even if it isn’t.

This is one reason that my Flickr portfolio feels more permanent than my Instagram photos: I can find them without resorting to third-party apps. If I want to find a particular photo on Instagram, I have to page down through my profile until I find it. On Flickr, I can find a 10-year-old photo of a fountain in seconds by searching for “fountain” and expanding the “Your photos” section of the results.

Then again, running my own site is only reliable as long as I can afford it. If something happens to me, and I can’t pay for hosting anymore, what then? I figure I’d simplify things down to where I could get a basic, super-cheap hosting plan. Make the blogs read-only so they can be served statically from a shared server or S3 bucket, or move them to WordPress.com, or just be willing to let them crash under load. But what if I’m incapacitated and can’t convert it? Or just plain not there anymore? If I really want to keep my corner of the web up “permanently,” I’m going to have to make a plan ahead of time.

Otherwise my carefully preserved photos, articles, and extended musings will be toast…leaving behind as context only broken links and all my supposedly (but not really) ephemeral offhand remarks on Twitter and Facebook.

Posted on
by

It’s weird to look back on all the posts I made agonizing about whether or not to buy a netbook.

It was never anything I would have used on a regular basis, and I knew that (which is why I never went through with buying one). It would have been something I used on trips, mainly conventions, and only to overcome the shortcomings of late 2000s smartphones.

Mainly: photos and typing.

Photo by VIA Gallery from Hsintien, Taiwan - HP 2133 Mini-Note PC (front view compare with pencil) uploaded by Kozuch, CC BY 2.0
Photo by VIA Gallery from Hsintien, Taiwan – HP 2133 Mini-Note PC (front view compare with pencil) uploaded by Kozuch, CC BY 2.0
Back then, I always carried another camera to get the “good” pictures, because phone cameras were still crappy. So if I wanted to post something online, I had to get it off the camera, onto a computer, and then upload it. Today’s smartphone cameras and apps are so much more capable that they mostly solve the photo issues.

It’s still painfully slow to type anything of length on a phone, but tablets have emerged since then and are a lot easier to type on. Hybrids like the Surface Pro and add-on keyboards make it even easier.

Touchscreens have solved the crappy trackpad problem netbooks had.

Faster phones and cell networks, and a more mobile-friendly web, have made a lot more things possible directly on the phone.

Netbooks, meanwhile, are pretty much forgotten, at least in the form they existed in at the time. Chromebooks are doing OK, at least in schools, but they aren’t quite the same thing. You’d think “netbook” would refer to something more like the network-dependent Chromebook, but it typically referred to the tiny form factor of a mini-laptop.

Looking back at the Tori Amos signing that I mentioned in the series’ first post: These days I probably would have taken the pictures directly on my phone and posted to Instagram within minutes. As for the blogging, I might have powered through on the phone and added the pictures directly, or I might have done so on the tablet and added the pictures that would already have synced from the phone over WiFi.

I wouldn’t carry a laptop of any size around the convention floor, that’s for sure. And I probably wouldn’t bring one on a short trip at all unless I was planning on working during the evenings.

Posted on
by

I finally moved the public side of this blog over to HTTPS last weekend. Traditionally I’ve preferred to put public info on HTTP and save HTTPS for things that need it – passwords, payment info, login tokens, anything that should be kept private — but between the movement to protect more and more of the web from eavesdropping and the fact that tools are making it harder to split content between open and encrypted sides (the WordPress app sometimes gets confused when you run the admin over HTTPS but keep the public blog on HTTP), I decided it was time.

The last sticking point was putting HTTPS on my CDN, and I’d decided to try getting Let’s Encrypt and CloudFront working together over the weekend. Then Amazon announced their Certificate Manager for AWS, which took care of the hard part. All I had to do was request and approve the (domain-validated) certificate, then attach it. Done!

Downside: Because I opted for the SNI option on the CDN, rather than pay the premium to get unique IP addresses on every CloudFront endpoint, the images won’t work with older browsers like IE6. (Server Name Indication is a way to put more than one HTTPS site on the same IP address.)

On the other hand, the cert I have on the site itself is SHA2-signed (as it should be, now that SHA-1 is no longer sufficient), so it wouldn’t work with older browsers even if I turned off the CDN and kept the images on the server.

It’s the first time I’ve actually broken the ability of older browsers to see any of my personal sites. I’ve broken layouts, sure, but not completely cut them off. In general I’d rather not, but I think I’m OK with it this time because

  1. SHA1 really does have to go, SHA2 is well-established, and it’s not like I’m providing downloads of modern browsers or a critical communications forum for people who are stuck with ancient hardware/software because that’s all that’s available to them.
  2. SNI has been around for TEN YEARS.

And as it turns out, DreamHost’s ModSecurity rules block IE6 to begin with, so the whole site’s already broken in that browser.

So I guess next time I redesign I can finally drop any IE6 workarounds. :shrug:

Posted on
by

I woke up to ten or so first-time comments* in the moderation queue at Speed Force this morning. As I started reading them I was briefly confused: they were well-written, specific comments about comic books….that had nothing to do with the posts they were attached to. Complaining about Bendis’ writing on an interview with Paul Ryan (the artist, not the politician). Gushing about an Ultra-Humanite figure on a review of a Flash comic. Tips on finding exclusive Aquaman figures on a Flash TV episode review.

Then I felt strangely nostalgic, because I hadn’t seen this sort of spam in a long time.

As near as I can tell, the spammer finds a related site, scrapes comments from it, and pastes them into the target site. To what end I’m not sure, because the comments all linked to Facebook profiles. Most comment spam seems to be about link generation to prop up a spamvertised site in search rankings. But sure enough, when I searched for phrases from the spammy comments, I found the originals on a Daredevil fan blog, an action figure site, an artist’s blog, and so on.

I’ve got to give the spammer a little credit for two things:

  1. Finding actual comics-related blogs to scrape comments from.
  2. Inserting typos to make it harder to match. Though Google’s pretty good at fixing those.

In the end, though…

*plonk!*

*I have WordPress set up so that first-time commenters always go through moderation, while returning commenters are allowed through unless they trips a filter.

Posted on
by

Well, I dropped out of the 30-day blogging challenge after 20 days. Ironically, I think part of the problem was that I tried to get ahead. Most days I would write a post in the evening, either just after the kid went to bed or just before I did. On day 20, I posted at lunch. That broke my routine, and I forgot to post the next evening.

So…

I finished a few posts I’ve been working on for a while, so that worked out. There were several things I noticed that turned into what I hope made interesting commentary. That’s two wins. But then there were the days of filler, too. It’s not like I need to keep “I hate the 405” on its own page, after all. (Besides, that’s a given.)

Things I Learned

I really don’t like writing about current events or politics these days. On Friday the 13th, I couldn’t think of anything else to write about, but couldn’t start. I ended up reading Tumblr for some idea to jump off of, and found the Epi-Pen infographic. Then I went a whole week deliberately not writing about Paris, Beirut, or refugees.

If I wanted to keep the volume up without regard to focus, I think up plenty of ideas during the course of a day. I just have to (1) write down the topic so I remember and (2) find the time/inclination/brainpower to do the writing.

I wrote more about my kid than I expected. Probably more than I’ve written publicly in quite a while. This isn’t a parenting blog by a long shot, but in addition to costuming and art, I used several family conversations as jumping off points.

When I obsessively listen to a show for a week, I come up with lots of things I’d like to write about it. I followed Chess with a Les Misérables binge, and now I’ve got about five Les Mis-related topics on my list.

If you can’t think of anything to write about, ask your spouse for a topic.

I’m actually more comfortable sitting on the couch and writing on my tablet than firing up my computer and sitting at my desk. That surprised me, but the Galaxy Tab S2 is sooooo much faster than the Nexus 7 it’s ridiculous. And hey, couch!

Tally

6 Random observations.
4 Amusing photos that fit within one of the site’s long-running categories.
3 Articles I’ve been working on for a while and finally got around to finishing.
3 Follow-ups to older posts or series.
2 Reaction pieces.
1 Interesting photo that I cross-posted from Instagram/Flickr to satisfy the goal.
1 Total filler that I would delete if it weren’t for keeping a record of how far I got in the challenge.

List

  1. Mixed Emotions/Halloween/Comikaze
  2. Fruit Basket Case
  3. So Much for SudaSudafed
  4. I “Liked” Twitter Favorites
  5. Phone vs. Camera
  6. WiFi is the New Color TV
  7. Gloom ahead, blue sky behind
  8. So that’s where Vaporware comes from!
  9. Aaaargh!
  10. Genre TV Update
  11. Chess (Musical)
  12. Les Mis/Chess: Cosette vs. Florence (and Eponine)
  13. Epi-Pen How-To
  14. Symbolic Costuming: Stage vs. Screen
  15. Coin Slot For Your Cell Phone
  16. AAAAAARP!
  17. Panorama Fail: Chalk Edition
  18. Is the ransom note look obsolete?
  19. Too Many Notifications
  20. Oddly Specific Advertising

Posted on
by

For short posts, I’m actually more comfortable sitting on the couch and writing on my tablet than firing up my computer and sitting at my desk. This is something I discovered during NaBloPoMo. My workflow typically went like this:

  1. Write the post in the WordPress App.
  2. Set categories/tags and upload as a draft.
  3. Switch over to the admin interface to finalize and post: customize the URL, description, share options, etc.

What would send me to the computer are the things that are difficult to do on a tablet:

  • Layout and formatting.
  • Linking to other posts & sources.
  • Major editing.
  • Image size and filenames. Even if I use a file manager on my phone to rename the image, the WordPress app is going to change it on upload to something like wpid-123456789

I’m not sure how much of that is the couch and how much of that is the fact that I’ve been putting off upgrading my home computer in favor of the devices I use more often. I finally replaced the ancient Nexus 7 with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 a few months ago. (It’s awesome!) It’s FAR more responsive (the Nexus 7 was basically a proof of concept, and doesn’t deal with modern software very well), so I can actually use it for stuff.

Plus it turns out even at 8″, a 4:3 screen has a much better balance of onscreen keyboard and text area than the 8:5 screen did. Being able to see more of your document, even a little, has a surprising impact on how comfortable it is to write it.

Posted on
by

I’ve been making more of an effort to post here this year, though it’s been a long time since the site had many regular readers. I’d like to do more long-form writing, but that’s just not in the cards these days.

Some highlights:

Century Blvd - railroad bridge remainsLos Angeles/California: I’ve been following the demolition of a bridge near LAX to make way for a future Metro station, wrote a series of thoughts on the California drought, and looked at a slowly emptying mall in Anaheim.

Lunar eclipse mosaicScience: I caught two eclipses this year: a total lunar eclipse with the family, and a partial solar eclipse near the office. Katie did her own controlled experiment on wireless signals and seeds following up on some of the questions that should have been asked in that school experiment that went viral back in spring.

Katie as Alice (OUATIW) cosplayEntertainment: I’ve been reviewing Les Miserables adaptations, including two movies, a comic book, a live parody and a children’s book. I also finally saw productions of Ragtime and Into the Woods. (Good ones, fortunately.) Comic-Con (San Diego), WonderCon, and Long Beach Comic Con of course, including Katie’s awesome Alice (Once Upon a Time in Wonderland) cosplay at SDCC. And then there was 5 things to do with a smart watch at Comic-Con (#1 is to wear it with a Dick Tracy costume).

Troubleshooting is what brings people in the most. Finding the missing Windows 8.1 update was the most popular post of the year, though it’s 15th on the list behind older posts, most of which are also tech tips. It seems wireless networking on Linux is still more challenging than it ought to be.

22 Egress 1/2 MileMostly I’ve been trying to continue the occasional series that have been here for so long: funny signs, interesting/odd photos & observations, comic conventions (though less of that these days). Admittedly that means there’s a lot of overlap with my Instagram and Flickr streams (even more now that my phone is good enough to be my most often-used camera), but I try to add description and context when I post here. On that note, an old photo of a long-gone freeway “Egress” sign got some surprise attention from Reddit at one point.

Rainbow over El Segundo Giant's Chess Set Restroom for ME 9 Cent Only Stores Exploring the Creek Sunset Palm Tree Female Magneto at WonderCon Use Vertical Transportation

»All pages site-wide with this tag