Turning inner space into outer space
Sometimes, in conversation, someone will say a word or phrase and immediately follow it up with “Oh, I guess we’re not allowed to say that.” Usually it’s something racial, but it might also refer to sex or gender. I’m never sure how to respond. I mean, why would you want to, even if you were “allowed”? If you know that a group of people prefers to be called a certain thing, why wouldn’t you do…
In the Newsonaut colophon , I list VS Code with the caveat: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” This is a line from The Godfather Part III where Michael Corleone expresses his frustrations over being unable to get out of the mafia. It was also parodied in The Sopranos. It’s sort of the way I feel about VS Code. I would like to switch, but there is always something pulling me…
This is my entry for AuguStory , a blogging challenge from Robert Birming to tell the story of your blog. Once upon a time, Newsonaut was called Newsloops. The name was a mashup of news and Kamloops, reflecting my frequent commentary on local news for the newspaper where I worked. The internet was still new-ish back in 2010, but we could see it was coming for our lunch. One of our strategies was…
I’m not really sure that I care whether bots scrape Newsonaut and dump its contents into training grounds for large language models. In fact, I kind of hope they do. There is nothing sacred on this site. If it gets chewed up and spat out into the primordial soup of the Internet, then so much the better. Maybe my permuted content will slightly improve the response that someone, somewhere gets from…
This marks my 43rd post of the year, which is one more than the 42 I had in 2020. My next goal is to surpass the 64 posts I had in 2014. My best ever was 169 in 2011. In those days, though, it was more like a job. Now, writing has become one of the great pleasures of my life. You can see a graph of my progress on the Explore page.
On the one hand, there are plenty of HTML entities that can be used as icons on your blog. On the other hand, just try finding them! I wrote about this recently when I pointed out that there is indeed unicode for the magnifying glass commonly used for search. It’s just not called that. There are others like that. For example, a bulleted list icon that could be used to represent categories does…
julyreply I replied three times for Robert Birming’s JulyReply challenge . He now has a new challenge called AuguStory , where you write the story of your blog. That seems like something I could sink my teeth into. Here are links to my three July replies: » I seldom own my books » Markdown makes learning HTML less scary » Your metablogging is awesome
Blaugust is upon us , an annual challenge to set goals for the number of times you post in a month. Top prize goes to those how publish every day during August, but even five times will win you a bronze award. This is the first time I have heard of Blaugust, but a few years ago I took it upon myself to have a sort of Blogtober. In October 2020, I posted every day — twice on one day — for a total…
While looking for something else, I came across a folder on my Mac called “free for X”. In it were a bunch of plain text HTML files which together made up a Mac freeware website that was the predecessor to thriftmac . So I uploaded it to a server, opened the home page and sure enough there it was — an entire website from over 20 years ago still fully functional. The links to outside websites…
Katrina Evans has started a pixel club based on little windows . I’m an old dog willing to learn new tricks so I headed over to Piskel and gave it a shot using one of Katrina’s window templates. I decided to acknowledge wildfire season with a sunrise in the smoke. An orange orb in the grey was an easy start for a beginner. More often, I have a nice view of rivers, mountains and clear blue skies.…
julyreply Michael Harley prefers to read books on an e-reader, and makes sure he truly owns them by stripping off the DRM if possible. » I own my books This is not a problem for me because I mostly borrow books from the library with an app called Libby . The library system where I live has a great selection. If a book is popular and hard to get, I put in a hold even if it means waiting…
julyreply A post by Adam Newbold about how to ensure your website is portable had me thinking about how I sometimes do exactly what he advocates — upload HTML files to a server. Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day The idea is that you always have a copy of the site on your computer. So if the host shuts down for some reason, you can upload it to to a…
[This post is for RSS Club members only.] RSS Club was started by Dave Rupert as a way of providing RSS-only content. I took it as both a technical challenge and a thought-provoking way of talking about the pros and cons of RSS. One of the things I like most about RSS is that the app usually has a built-in reader that lets you read articles without visiting the website. It’s nicely formatted and…
This is a test of RSS Club. You should be able to read it in your RSS app, but not on the website.
Updated July 21, 2026, to include Vatican City, Togo and Niger. A pet peeve of mine is seeing flags with the wrong dimensions. Maybe I should learn to move on, but I can’t help it. Designers with a love for visual consistency are quite happy to show you every country’s flag with the same length and width. And I can see why. Consistency is a design principle from way back. But what you’re seeing is…