Because…. The Web We Lost
Because….
Because…. Stop Using Facebook
Because… Tech and Liberty
Etc Etc.
Internet
What are the chances?
Once upon a time I had the whole Internet to myself. Then I found another Duncan Moran and we exchanged emails and said “Hi” to ourselves and contemplated the existential ramifications of just being a Duncan Moran rather than the Duncan Moran. Today I do not get a look in as you cannot move for us…
I must remember to check out my acting career.
But as a father of a Haydn I was surprised to find a Duncan Moran who seems to have a Hayden…
Although probably not that significant in the big picture.
D is for Disabling Ad Blockers
Who does not love the Internet? I know I do apart from all the advertising that people keep sticking on it. Fortunately one can be spared the worse excesses with a range of Ad Blockers (link for extensions to Safari on a Mac but there are similar offerings for all browsers/systems). But now sites are detecting the Ad Blockers and asking you to turn them off.
If this is a site that you particularly want to support then disabling the Ad Blocker may be good choice but for most sites the same content can be found elsewhere and we do not particularly need it regurgitated from here and so can just leave.
It is not a one way thing as the delivery of the advertisements cost us money as they are consuming the bandwidth of our Internet connection. On mobile network this can start to add up. A recent survey found that at its worse to load 4 megabytes of actual content you had to download 15.4 megabytes of advertising at a cost of $0.32 rather than the $0.08 you planned to read.
Factor in that the sites usually have no control over what advertising is displayed as advertisers bid for your attention in instant auctions so leaving the whole system open to be exploited as a delivery mechanism for malware and there is little reason not to block the ads.
If asked to Disable your Ad Blocker – Just Say No!
Free Bonus D: In my catalogue D is also for De La Soul. Who doesn’t etc….
Pupinia Stewart: Beyond Poe’s Law.
In 2005 Poe’s law established that on the Internet an extreme point of view is indistinguishable from a parody of that point of view if the parody lacks any identifying smilies or other indicators.
Today amidst the never ending background noise of the Internet it becomes increasingly difficult to verify what is real and what is parody.
Pupinia Stewart (this may or may not be her name) at 16 years old (this may or may not be her age) took on the whole world… and won. Slam dunk (as I believe they say in Americanish).
Beyond satire which stands apart and points a finger, beyond Absurdist and Dadaist she holds a mirror up to the Internet. Who is the stupid one here?
November – The month of spam
While some spent November eating treats and occasionally writing a few words others spent it manfully holding back a flood of spam. Admittedly this is all taken care of by the wonderful Akismet plugin, without which many a blog would vanish under the ever growing spam problem, but even their servers occasionally struggled with the weight of it all.
Apparently some people still use the Windows operating system but it is increasingly hard to understand why they think that is a sensible or acceptable option when even that which claims to protect them from their own stupidity is part of the problem.
There are better alternatives to the piss-poor abomination that is Windows.
Inevitably…
Apple Maps
While Apple’s maps may not be perfect they will at least get you home along Hawthorn road when it becomes a cycle/foot path…
unlike the dead end that Google maps will lead you down…
Surely it is unfair to compare a mapping system that has only been live for a day and one that has had several years to become ever more refined. We live in hope that Google will get it right one day
Some Pixelmator Colour Splash Rocket Science
There is a one star review of the excellent Pixelmator in the App Store….
Presumably referring to the ColorSplash app for [wikipop]iDevices[/wikipop] which holds a particular colour (or area of colours) while turning the rest of the image to [wikipop]greyscale[/wikipop]. How hard can it be…
With an image loaded into Pixelmator:
1: Choose Select Color from the Edit menu
2: Use the Eyedropper to select the colour to be retained
3: Use the Radius slider to adjust the amount of colour to be selected
4: Back to the Edit menu to Inverse the selection
5: From the Image menu choose Desaturate
6: Back to the Edit menu to Deselect the selection
Done. In under 30 seconds. Phew! Rocket science! Of course you could take longer and do a better job 😉 and there are several ways to achieve the same effect. To expand the selection to include several colours you could use the Magic Wand tool…
