@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

TheIdOfAlan

@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io

Hi! I'm Alan. I've had the pleasure of working on the web for 20yrs and want to share that joy with everyone. The options for getting started kinda suck though.

So, I'm making a free, open-source site builder called Neopoligen. It's designed to make building your own site free and easy w/ no programming experience required.

You can learn more about it and follow along here if you're interested: https://www.neopoligen.com/

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

A cool thing about alt text on Mastodon is that it works with the translation feature. Once you've translated a post the alt text beneath will change to your preferred language also.

So by adding alt text to your images not only are you adding accessibility for visual impairments, you're also adding language accessibility. Neat!

The same post, but now the Mastodon "Translate" button has been clicked and it shows "Translated from Nederlands using DeepL.com". The screenshot is still in Dutch, but now the alt text is translated into English, revealing that the article was about solar panels.

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@mcc I just discovered that Adobe updated Photoshop and Lightroom with the ability to add/edit metadata tags specifically for alt-text. I'm optimistic that Mastodon will be one of the first services to start using it automatically.

I updated my own site builder to use the fields. It's so nice to be able to use the apps for editing and to have the data stored in the image files themselves.

https://www.alanwsmith.com/en/2h4ynhnr/?add-alt-text-to-images-in-adobe-photoshop-and-lightroom-2024

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@mcc yep yep. this issue was created in 2020 (before the official metadata fields were created). You just reminded me to ping it as well about the new fields. :blobfoxheadphones:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14903

TheIdOfAlan, to Mac
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

Watch out if you use iTerm2 on a mac. The latest version (3.5.x) integrates OpenAI/ChatGPT. It looks like you have to set keys to use it, but I don't want it even in the mix so I'm sticking with the 3.4.x release.

#mac #programming #cli

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

I’m 42-years-old, and I’m always looking out for new music. And not just new music – forgotten music. One of my hobbies is trawling YouTube for songs with 0 views.

But I’m an outlier. For most people, discovery of new music peaks at adolescence. And when you hit your 30s, musical taste calcifies.

There’s lots of data to back this up.

I notice this doesn’t just happen with music but with movies as well. Lots of older men don’t want to watch new movie franchises. They want to return to the old “nostalgia” well again and again.

Personally, I find such malaise depressing. I never want to stop growing as a human being, experiencing new things.

CHART: When was the best decade for music? Your answer probably depends on how old you are
CHART: On average, peoples' music taste evolved quickly through age 25, before reaching "maturity" in the mid-30s
CHART: average number of artists in listening rotation by age group

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@atomicpoet in case you aren't already familiar with it, Every Noise at Once is a project someone did while at spotify categorizing music. It's a fun place to explore

https://everynoise.com/

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Who are the people who constantly need AI to make summaries of emails and then go and generate a thousand-word email because a single sentence “isn’t professional”

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@thomasfuchs insecure middle-managers?

TheIdOfAlan, to random
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

I got to introduce a friend to using the "ISO 8601" date/time format for file naming so their podcast files stay sorted.

For dates, the format is

YYYY-MM-DD

Using that as the first thing in the file name you get things like:

2024-03-02 Some file.txt
2024-03-13 Another file.txt
2024-04-19 And another.txt
2024-05-09 And again.txt

It's a nice quality of life hack for when sorting by date is more important than sorting by title

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

TheIdOfAlan, to music
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

this is amazing. a drummer who's never heard bulls on parade by rage against the machine f-ing kills it doing their own version on the first take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSX7D-dJRBo

TheIdOfAlan, to Blog
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

New post:

Accessible HTML Tabs For Web Pages

https://www.alanwsmith.com/en/2fggula7/?accessible-html-tabs-for-web-pages

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

What's one of the silliest domain names you own? Mine is legit-elephant.lol and there's an entire story behind it. Some of you were even here for this!

C'mere and sit down, I'll tell you the story of the fateful night in the fediverse where Elon Musk flipped his lid and the entire fediverse flipped a middle finger to him.

The story begins during the winter holidays of 2022, back when hachyderm lived on Kris Nova's servers

It was a different world then, wasn't it?

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@hazelweakly I used to have variations of votes4sale_com. The idea was to put it up before a presidential election with bar graphs representing the "Votes 4 Sale Polling Results". You could add individual votes for your candidate by clicking as much as you want. Or, you could pay $1 for a thousand votes

It was gonna be a shot at memeing into a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

I never built the site and haven't thought about it in years. But, now that I think about it, it is an election year...

TheIdOfAlan, to random
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

at a patio bar, there's a cat ripping up guitar loops. Gives me a idea: Get a bunch of musicians to make loop tracks to upload to music services and then play then as copyright free tunes for live streams

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Probably the most important solar observing safety bit:

⚠️ Even if you’re in the path of totality you need to use eclipse glasses at all times the sun is visible even if it’s only the tiniest little sliver.

🚫 You can NEVER look at the sun without eclipse glasses.

👁️ Only during totality, and totality only (e.g. not at 99.9%) you can look without glasses because the Moon literally completely hides the sun so you’re only looking at the Moon then.

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@thomasfuchs It maybe worth mentioning there are apps that use GPS to find your location to figure out and announce when you're in totality (and therefore when it's safe to look).

I used one for a prior eclipse and it was great. I wouldn't have known when it was safe otherwise.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Guess the song!

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@thomasfuchs psycho killer - talking heads?

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

Core competencies are something I think about a lot. I love to dig into what makes companies or ecosystems or social groups tick. Especially when that core competency enables what they do:

McDonald's, for example, is a real estate company that happens to make burgers.

Walmart is a shipping logistics company that also sells things.

What other examples can you think of where the core competency of the company is such that the "thing" a company does falls out naturally as a consequence?

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@hazelweakly I used to work at the PGA TOUR. The core competency isn't golf, it's media rights and licensing

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Today is my birthday!

If you'd like to do something for me for my birthday, would you please reply to this with—or by other means send me— something with colors you liked? Like an image or a video or a link. Music would also be acceptable if it gives you a strong synesthesiac association with color.

If this request confuses you, here are some examples of images with colors I found striking [Artists: Laurie Barmore, Vian Borchert, Erica Aurahack]. But your reply can be whatever colors you like.

Abstract art by Vian Borchert
Abstract art by Vian Borchert

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@mcc Here's one I'm proud of.

I made it by taking one of my black and white photos into and converting it to 3D cubes that I then took into to apply lighting for the the colors

bijram, to random German
@bijram@graz.social avatar

Quote of the day: "I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are"

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@bijram love that. i'm adding it to my quote collection. is there someone i can attribute it to?

molly0xfff, to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

http://indieweb.org is a terrible influence

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@molly0xfff I'm currently on this train. Writing my own markdown replacement too, because why not :blobfoxbreadsnoot: (aiming to have v0.1 out this weekend :ablobfoxbongo: )

hazelweakly, to random
@hazelweakly@hachyderm.io avatar

This article is fucking amazing. It lays out exactly how to do database changes, codebase changes, and feature flag deployment strategies step by step with code examples in order to practice continuous deployment without downtime or breaking anything.

I've wanted to write this article for years and never got around to it. Now I don't have to!

(Looks like they have a book on continuous deployment coming out soon. I might have to get this for my teams 👀 )

https://oooops.dev/2021/07/30/surviving-continuous-deployment-in-distributed-systems/

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@hazelweakly There's nothing quite like having someone you trust in a field pointing you to a resource for something you want to learn

Much appreciated :ablobfoxbongo:

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

It has been a minute since I've done a music question, and it seems like a fun day for it, so:

What is your Pump Yourself Up Kickass Song?

Here's one of my favorites:

https://youtu.be/3CGxxJeQ6Tk?si=1cVMNoZWQzNOSpOA

TheIdOfAlan,
@TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

@RickiTarr

Bleachers - I Wanna Get Better is always a great listen for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5osPtE7kXI&t=56s

girlonthenet, to random
@girlonthenet@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @girlonthenet how about sky blue

    thomasfuchs, to random
    @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

    This is my favorite era of Computer design, it's kind of Dieter Rams meets Soviet space probe engineer

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @thomasfuchs feels like the start of a pixar bot

    keithjgrant, to random
    @keithjgrant@front-end.social avatar

    oh shit is today the day one of my favorite side projects falls over due to old dependencies 😰

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @keithjgrant too real :blobfoxcomputer: :blobfoxcrylaugh:

    thomasfuchs, to retrocomputing
    @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

    Does anyone know what the materials were used for backdrops like in the picture? Or is there a handy "make photos of computers like it's 1990" guide? I'd love to be able to make photos of old computers (and other stuff) like this.

    [Update: thanks to some pointers from readers found this: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/816336-REG/Impact_BGC_1012_GM_Crushed_Muslin_Background_10.html]

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @thomasfuchs heads up that they wrinkle a lot but steam out pretty easily. Or, if you're hanging them on stands you can use A clamps to pull them tight so it's not much of an issue if they are back enough from your subject to be blurred a little

    TheIdOfAlan, to random
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    The word "thistles" looks like a cat stepped on the keyboard

    noellemitchell, to random
    @noellemitchell@mstdn.social avatar

    Well no wonder it seemed like nobody saw my posts on here 😆 I removed 400 dormant followers and there's still more to go

    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @noellemitchell I'm still here! :blobfoxcrylaugh:

    kubikpixel, (edited ) to rust
    @kubikpixel@chaos.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    TheIdOfAlan,
    @TheIdOfAlan@hachyderm.io avatar

    @kubikpixel rust error messages looked like a foreign language when I first started working with the language. As I've gained practice learning to ready them, I can't imagine working without them.

    I've heard rust folks say that if an error doesn't contain enough information to let you know how to it, they consider that a bug. That's just an amazing philosophy.

    (Of course, it takes practice to learn how to read them to get the info so it's not an instant thing, but it's awesome)

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