...on brunch.

This Sunday sermon did not happen, on account of yours truly being on holidays.

Catch you after recess ? 

Also, I've been reading (and listenin') a great many things about TV writing lately, and I mentioned #InTheFlesh not too long ago, so I figured you could do worse than go read this during the hiatus.

~ 

Back in black.

Today I reverted to a "simple" template, because the so-called "dynamic" thingies are way too slow to render on a shoddy connection. Also some of the content didn't work properly, and I can't be arsed to decipher the CSS and html templates that rule blogspot page layout.

On the downside, that means the blog is no longer mobile-browser aware and will serve you the same page regardless, but I've tried to mitigate that somehow.

The page layout is set for 1400 pix width, which on any proper computer display this side of the millennium should fit comfortably, but in case you're reading this from a tablet or phablet you should be good as long as you can fit 800 pix or thereabouts.

Tested on a TF101 10.1" tablet (1280*800 if memory serves), it takes only a small zoom out to cram the whole thing to screen width, and the fonts are still large enough to read just fine in landscape mode.

In portrait mode,  you need no further zoom out to read the main content column, which is designed for a nominal 900 pix width, but reads smoothly enough shrunk into 800 pix width. You'll lose the sidebars however, while clean vertical scrolling becomes sort of a minigame — that's my gift, to you.

And yeah, it's light-on-dark again, because I dig trog mode, and because not all devices offer a convenient way to swap between night and day modes.
  

When looking for a segue image, do not google "chocolate shower" — just sayin'…

Unrelated, in the crossing wires department, the following mashup happened in my shower* earlier today :

— Adam Curtis : People embrace ultra-conservative views such as theocracy not (just) because they're dog-crazy, but because they've lost faith in the ability of politicians to change the world for the better, on account of political power inevitably leading to corruption.

— Bill Maher : The craziest reactionary ultra-conservative really are a tiny minority, only one so vocal that clueless politicians (whose pulsometers got calibrated forever back in the era of one-way mass-media) can't correct for the distortion and then buy into the fiction the loudmouths really make the core of their constituency.

Extrapolate.

*[I meant : 'in my head', while in the shower, wherein neither Maher nor Curtis are particularly welcome to partake in person.]

Unique browsing experience.

…that's what the blurb says, at least.

Yeah, it's all black on white now, as opposed to the opposite: I'm toying with the new Dynamic Views templates on blogger, which are neat, if still kinda gimped by the lack of a 2-sidebars option and easily selectable trog-mode switch (or at least a light-on-dark scheme that doesn't require CSS voodoo).
Also some gadgets don't show in this template, but for the price I pay, it's hard to argue…

So, expect it to change again in the near future, I can't promise anything except it will remain free of blink, bling, longhand fonts and adverts if I can help it.
In the meantime, you can play with the corny display modes, just under the masthead.

***

Me luv Charlie.

Charles Stross is one of the most endearing SciFi writers of the past decade, and I mean that in a good way.
He mans a very stimulating online diary, which he recently moved into a previously deserted domain of his: accelerando.org.
While announcing the relocation, he mentioned his Singularity ! A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds, which is not only funny as hell but also happens to be TiddlyWiki-powered.

Mom, I think I'm in love, I hope you'll understand.

PS: those stranded in Baltimore over this coming weekend (I know at least one who is) may find comfort knowing it's also where Charlie is (lolcat and stuff).

Operating system of me.

This post summarizes a few ideas which I hold to be true, while not necessarily endorsing them from an ethics standpoint, and which you can assume I take for granted in any piece of opinion I write.
Being one of those people who are never entirely comfortable with certainty, and live with the nagging feeling that confidence is mostly about overlooking stuff — the paradox is only apparent — there isn't much I take for granted.

This list is intended as a helper resource for whoever decides to enter a discussion with me: if any of those seem too deeply flawed to you, you'll save us both time and frustration by first correcting me on those postulates you deem broken before you try to skin any other beast — either that or drop it.

Thanks.

[For lack of a more sensible ordering (that I can figure), entries are organized by growing character count.]

• Less is (often) more.
• You can't un-fry things.
• Diversity is inherently desirable.
• The passing of time has no purpose.
• 90% of any human production is crud.
• A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
• Convenience beats quality under most circumstances.
• The map is not the territory — don't get caught in metaphors.
• Hard work and steadfastness can't alone salvage flawed designs.
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
• Those who most tend to seek power are less likely to exert it wisely.
• Our brains don't naturally grasp statistics, not even simple percentages.
• Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
• Ideas should not be held responsible for the people who claim to defend them.
• It's unlikely there is a god… even more unlikely it cares in the least about you.
• Evolution is not a perfecting principle, it works on the just-good-enough principle.
• Concepts should not be judged based solely on the success or failure of their implementations.
• In most competitions, the optimal strategy is to hamper opponents' ability to compete whenever possible.

• New one-line-beliefs will be added as they come, if/when applicable.

• These one-liners each ought to link to a full entry eventually, but as usual, don't hold your breath, this blog is a low-priority item as far as I'm concerned.

• Catchy zingers that happen to be corollary to any of the above have been purposefully omitted from this short list, and will be covered — if ever — in the full-entry versions.
Ex: I strongly support the notion that "Universal Suffrage is a scam", but it doesn't warrant an entry in the list above, as it is merely a corollary of several of other listed postulates (primarily but not limited to) "the optimal strategy in most competitions…", "convenience beats quality…", "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." and "those who most tend to seek power…".
Ditto for: "Don't wait for your afterlife to make something of your time, there is no respawn for you noob."

Don't trust the candyman…

Not all wishes come true, and in the world of electronic hobby publishing less than in most places, but still… the Other Blog is finally on, and there's a slew of articles coming up for that one.

As for AcDpad, I'm still waiting on the long overdue upgrade to run more than one instance of self concurrently so I have time to write here too, but I'm not losing hope entirely on plan B, which is merely me becoming fantastically smarter and more efficient at time management.

Don't hold your breath though, or don't sue me if you do.

I didn't take the week off.

...I swear.
For some reason, 6 days flew by since last post, and I have no idea where they went.
Subjective time flow here is really weird, and/or I can't seem to get the hang of it.

I've massed notes on design and world building, but I can't bring myself to post half-cocked rants, for some reason (believe that, previous entries aren't a fifth as bad the brain drool as they could have been without copy-editing) ...maybe I'm not blogger material after all.

Anyway, I'll play tease, be it only to guilt-trip myself into finishing those articles.

Coming Soon™ on this screen:

• Monica VS Phoebe: the dirt.
• MovieOS — Part II: The Bad.
• The other blog: because I can't post daily on one, why not make it worse ?
• Game making and the meaning of life: of the great why ? that keeps us awake at night.
  

Until then, I recommend this Gama article about MMO*s and addiction (yeah, it's about as original a topic as RMT and Virtual Property debates, but it still got me thinking).

ttyl.

Pentimento-free area.

Since I started populating this blog in earnest, about a week ago, I've improved the template and blog on the fly, cosmetics-wise.

A side effect is I've been looking back at already published posts more than once, and occasionally edited released content beyond mere spell checking and copy-proofing, which is probably a good thing on average, but it got me thinking about the abstraction layer of the blog template.

If I had a hard time writing here, up until I tweaked this blog template to an approximation of my taste, what does it say about reading it ?

I realize I'm using this platform as a poor man's (tiddly)wiki, because I'm lazy, and I can't help but try and emulate the organic nature of tiddler-based writing on a support that is meant as a fire-and-forget journaling platform.

Thus, I overdo on production value, revising the past as I go, which wouldn't be so much of a lie if it wasn't for the fact blogspot is conveniently (?) devoid of versioning and history.
A few months/years from now, will I be updating old entries to account for new developments ?
What of interface and cosmetic tweaks, could context change be enough to affect the meaning of old content ?

Does it matter ? In any way ?
Guess that's what the Brainfart label is for.

Periodicity...

OK, one entry every three months probably doesn't exactly fit the bill of online journaling, unless one lives on geological clock.
In my defense, I'm not really happy with the medium, and would rather use some tiddlywiki-like sort of platform, if I could find the time to tweak it to my taste for blogging.

Meanwhile, I've been stockpiling articles drafts on the laptop, waiting for some quiet time to sort notes out into something akin to legible content.
That time, I believe, may be about now.

Thanks to a recent relocation to an otherwise pleasant but internet challenged locale, I've spent the past 10 days sieging the local great firewall of censorship, and generally just trying to get on the damn intarweb.

Now that things are more or less sorted, I'm slowly making my peace with the notion that I'm just about stuck in a 20th century-flavored asynchronous online paradigm, where mail and semi-static content rule.

After I found myself firing up IRC as a substitute for MSN/Gtalk (because it's easier to catch up on group chat logs when one drops unexpectedly on IRC), Blogging suddendly started to make sense, in a @well mailing list way.

So... stay tuned, something may yet happen before another three months.