On that note, here's a bunch of other things I wish various software I use often would introduce
Summary:
1) Firefox - "Private Browsing Container Tab Type
2) Desktop Window Managers - Project-Based Application Window Grouping + Complete Window State Restoration on Restart
It's been a while since I've posted any updates about my "MediaSlurper" project...
Well, that's largely a good thing! Given that it was built as a personal tool to solve some very specific bottlenecks in my data management workflows, that means that in practice, it's largely been working very well for my needs (or at least, "good enough!), which is no mean feat, given that I run it at least 3-4 times a day, almost every day! Granted, there are a handful over "very annoying" bugs relating to the various heuristics in use to avoid making duplicate copies of anything!)... but those only happen in very specific cases that I can always manually enable escape-hatch hacks in the code to work around!
But yeah, in general, it's been working well enough that I've been able to pause active development efforts to focus on other more pressing matters (e.g. "Picasa Replacement Project", and/or general life stuff)
Anyway, with the recent need to start urgently investigating properly migrating from old phone to new one (NOTE: I actually made the switch early this morning, and apart from a "major heart attack / moments of sinking terror" trying to get the Whatsapp transition to transfer over smoothly), I ended up running both phones for a while, and needing to be able to use MediaSlurper with both. This lead to a flurry of activity for the past few weeks, culminating in some of the final most useful stuff only coming online today, *AFTER* I have already effectively transitioned off the old phone....
Nevertheless, given that I don't know when I might need this stuff again (or whether someone else might find it useful if/when I ever release this tool), I have decided to keep plugging away at it to finish the last push of new functionality that should address a bunch of other things I've found myself really needing over the past month or two.
This weekend, I've finally been looking into finally transferring across to using the new phone I'd gotten a few months ago (*).
As feared, there are currently a whole bunch of "manual intervention" bottlenecks that are not syncing over and require lots of manual effort to fix. Some of which are really silly and should be rectified by various vendors, while others are historical mistakes coming back to haunt
A discussion with a friend yesterday about portable audio recorders had me thinking about something fun to do while travelling that I only really recently realised I should try doing more of.
That is: Recording short audio clips (in addition to any video clips I'm already capturing, though again... more random clips from different places are again something fun to have) from various places during my travels - and in particular, doing it for any public transit route you end up spending a lot of your time during the trip using.
I just read a very thought provoking blog post from Geoffrey Litt, based on some ideas pitched some 30-ish years ago by Mark Weiser
Blog Title: "Enough AI Copilots, We Need AI HUD's"
https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/07/27/enough-ai-copilots-we-need-ai-huds
My (Non-AI Powered) Summary, with additional spin on top:
1) The industry at large is going about this all wrong!
2) The "me too" industry frenzy currently of just piling in on top of the "tasteless" (to paraphrase Steve Jobs) zombie train of building digital versions of Tom Riddle's horcrux-diary is stupid.
I'm with Mark on this - as those who've followed me for long enough know, I'm very much against all this "chat" and "agent" style crap that all the AI-TechBros are currently all still hyping up.
3) HCI + Interaction Design specialists/experts such as myself should really be stepping in and stepping up to meet this challenge head on - to get back in there to steer the ship as it were, instead of being backseat passengers to an almost certain trainwreck - by doing what we do best:
a) Taking a step back, and asking the essential basic questions about what exactly we're trying to really achieve, and **WHY**...
b) Crucially, not letting the existing framing cloud our judgement, and obscuring our own personal ethical + philosophical principles on the direction that we wish to steer technology in
4) What is it that we have to offer then?
A) Show Don't Tell - If your tech is really that fancy, it doesn't need to be in our faces all the time. We shouldn't *need* to be constantly "conversing" with it, like micro-managing a third-rate annoying minion
B) An Assistive Superpower - (Now where have we heard *that* before? ;) Yep, the emphasis here should be on the tech taking care of the mundane stuff, while using its strengths to highlight stuff we can't figure out as humans...
*NOW* we're talking.
i) Harnessing tech to help people do what they couldn't otherwise do
ii) Augmenting + Building Up, NOT Replacing + Subjugating!
These are indeed very much things that are right in my wheelhouse, and problems that I can get behind! (Whereas the "AI" discourse to date has very much been a very alienating, and unpalatable soup of world-destroying slop that make me and countless others sick to our very core)
Thanks for the reminder Geoffrey!
As for the rest of us: It's high time we started getting cracking, and righting this ship! There's lots of work to do!
What follows are a bunch of late night ramblings + musings about things I can't help wondering after seeing seeing a YT rabbithole analysing the relative downfall of Pixar in the last few years...
(Disclaimer: As some of the topics here are apparently contentious, I will be moderating any comments on this post heavily as I see fit... you have been warned)
Many people know this old building as the old "Canterbury Public Library" building
For me, this was and always will be: "The Original Home of 'Jade Garden' - Dim Sum Chinese Restaurant" (although apparently, they may have been in one other location before this one IIRC)
I was inspired to write this little oral history down for posterity when stumbling across the photo below earlier today (complete with the caption that showed below it). It was one of the first times I'd come across a decent photo of the place, so thought it was a good chance to write this down.
Canterbury Public Library 19 December 1981. Exterior of the former Canterbury Public Library building on the corner of Cambridge Terrace and Hereford Street. Christchurch Star archive photo
Seeing one of the latest threads this morning about Win11's Recall feature, I'm not surprised that it does what it does TBH
Some of these points overlap with comments I made earlier when news of this feature first broke. I can't easily find those now, but if/when I do, I may amend this post with those notes as well, as they better cover a bunch of other insights I don't think I've captured here as well.
EDIT: Cool, according to this Ars article, they do seem to have put in place most of the reasonable safeguards I'd expect / recommend them to have.
Just saw a very interesting video looking at music theory / analysis at a different way than "chord chord chord chord chord" (to paraphrase the video) 😜
Instead, this video argues that we should be focussing more on the horizontal movements of the parts (i.e. "voice leading"), which thus helps draw your attention towards the flow / journey of the piece more...
Link: "Inside the Score - Most musicians learn harmony wrong"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJYj57TUKj
I know I already have too many open / unfinished projects (and a bunch more un-started yet)...
BUT, I was "doing the rounds" again after work today on HTML/CSS alternatives to doing web-deployable apps, and ended up looking at the QML situation again...
(Unfortunately, while I'll try to finish current project using HaxeUI, I'm running into too many weird update bugs + other hard-to-overcome limitations that I'm currently inclined to go back to looking for another solution for the next test project / whatever will be used to implement Parus)
TLDR: Am again getting itchy hands to jump back into building my "Kea" language compiler in Python (possibly either hacking OR deriving significant inspiration from "PureQml"'s Python-based "QML-subset -> HTMl5 / Javascript" compiler), but focussing first on the QML-like UI-definition syntax (before adapting the wider language later, and for non-web backends for those other parts)...
TBH, I personally generally dislike most "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy" stories / media. Among other reasons... they suck! 😜
As many in the Blender world will know by know, Flow - a Latvian animated film created by a small team in Blender, and rendered using Eevee just won this year's Oscar for Best Animated Film!
Woah! What a moment! The first Blender animated Best Animated Feature award winner! WOW! 😱🤯😍🥳
A *VERY* big congratulations to all the team who worked on this!!! A very well deserved win!
Recently, I saw a post from a music student mentioning that they were thinking of writing up some stuff on the techniques they'd learned while using GNU Lilypond - i.e. a LaTeX-like "music typesetter" with its own custom input/programming language (doused / polluted with a heavy dose of Guile-Scheme).
This post gathers up some of my own notes on my own journey with these tools, and how this has tied into where I am today. Come to think of it, this year actually marks something like "just over two decades ago" that I was doing this shit (since IIRC, I probably started doing all this back in 2004!) - jeez... time flies and makes you feel old when put like that!
Earlier this evening, I came across the following video on Facebook of a 1950's vintage architect's drafting desk - apparently manufactured by "Nike Eskilstuna" from Sweden.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2626640980856219
Wow! This is so freaking awesome! TBH, if I had the floorspace, I'd probably get one for my office-space / living room, especially if I got hold of one with wheels for easier moving! 😍
I know it's technically a "work night", but I just went through my drawer trying to dig out my ancient mockups for a project I've recently revived.
I had originally built it as a thing for Dad to use for outreach activities - Back in the day (i.e. back in 2009, from the comments in the source code I've been porting between machines), I'd managed to get the core engine running, but ultimately ran out of time (+ also, a suitable distribution tech stack back in the day), so had ultimately abandoned that project.
Anyway, recently I've been resurrecting it as a motivating toy app to play with Haxe + HaxeUI.
* This seemed like the perfect project for learning this stack + playing around with it. It was a relatively simple + straightforward little piece of tech that is small enough to be easily implementable / portable (i.e. within constraints of what I can safely manage energy-wise + time-wise on top of long days of fulltime 9-5 weekday job commitments).
* It was also an almost perfect case for this tech stack (i.e. the HTML5 deployment option is particularly attractive for someone who has never been able to get CSS layouts + Javascript coding to really sit well with my worldview).
In other words, this was the PERFECT type of small toy project to tinker around with during the evenings now, as I try to re-establish a small pipeline for me to get a bunch of small fun projects done for myself, where I have full + complete control over every aspect. No questions asked. No input from third parties accepted or needed. 100% owned by me, and for the sole purpose of me having a creative outlet to do fun stuff for myself.
Yesterday (or actually two days ago now, if I end up finishing writing this post tonight) marked a year since I got an R5 as the successor for my 7D. Its funny how, earlier this evening, I'd been wondering: "Hah... I wonder what day exactly it was that I got my new camera last new year... I'm sure it was around this time of year-ish"
This is a follow-up to my earlier posts a week in, and a few months in.
Key Points:
* Overall, I ended up filling 2x 256GBmemory cards (give or take) this year with this camera - Which also means, I've quickly burned through half a TB of disk storage (vs under/around 150 GB a year previously)... More on this in a bit
* By and large, it has now ended up becoming my daily driver. While initially it was just to get used to it under different lighting conditions, later the increased image quality + better performance in a wide range of lighting conditions was a major drawcard.
* I've been on two multi-day trips with this camera now, so can say quite a bit more about how it handles for such usage
* In terms of battery life - I've got a total of 3 batteries, though in practice, I've only really needed 2 (with the third coming into its on those occasions where I'm too lazy to charge the one in use (and forgot to charge the other one, which had gone flat a while earlier). For typical cycles, they usually average around 400-600 (centered around 550 ish), though sometimes that figure can be as high as 1100 - 1300. Lowest would've been around 250 - 300 ish.
* The improved light gathering capabilities have really come in handy with the increased major Aurora storms this past year, meaning that I've been able to see + capture Aurorae for the first time in my life
Earlier I came across an article discussing the findings of an interesting study (i.e. https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-last-name-skew-grades/) where the authors claimed to have detected evidence of a systematic bias against students whose surnames fall later in the alphabet than those whose surnames appeared earlier (when assignments / exams get presented to the marker in alphabetical order, due to the increased used of Learning Management Systems that commonly sort in alphabetical order by default).
TBH, anyone who has spent enough time grading large sets of assignments (*) can probably explain why:
The first time you see a particular mistake / class of stupidity, you do tend to react kinder to it. But by the nth time, it really starts to grate...
A similar thing applies when screening through CV's and applications for a position:
The first time you see some new-grad / early career applicant mention doing an internship or something with some name-brand company, it does sound pretty impressive. However, if they have the misfortune of also applying for the same position along with a bunch of other new-grads who also took part in that same internship / etc., this now starts to count against *all* of them (i.e. "meh... it was maybe just a class assignment / group project type situation, where all the interns were held in an sandpit and given some kind of toy / training exercise")
Those who've followed me on various other platforms will probably have heard bits of this spiel before, maybe worded slightly differently in each instance, but ultimately discussing the same ideas / talking points. So I thought it'd be good to write up a canonical version once and for all - especially since it's unlikely that I'll end up doing this anytime soon anyway (i.e. never say never, but at least for the foreseeable future in the next 3-5/10 years, I'm honestly not really that interested in a return to academia or teaching).
Key Points:
1) I've seen things. Perhaps a whole lot more than most people get the chance to see, and with a bunch of variables controlled for (or at least held somewhat constant).
2) From my observations, left to their own devices, the majority of students gravitate towards doing certain things that, left uncorrected / undiscovered (until too late usually) practically mean they probably don't learn half the lessons they probably really ought to (i.e. From my perspective, they practically learned nothing (beyond maybe picking up some new trivia that'll be gone soon after the final exam) and just tried to get an easy pass on a course they may have thought was one of the "easier" ones they may be required to take). At least IMO.
3) "UCAPT" - A useful mnemonic I developed during my time doing this, which I adopted for evaluating student's work (+ and also later in my own practice) to check if all the necessary things have been accounted for.
For the nth time in as many years, I've recently been hunting for a new office chair for my home office setup. Unfortunately, every time I go for another round, the options seem to have gotten way worse than the previous round!
To put everything in context, here is my list of (seemingly impossible to satisfy in the current market) requirements:
a) I want something with an "executive chair" type high-back form factor with sufficient base + back padding
(i.e. It should be suitable for someone about 6 foot 1-2'' tall to comfortably sit/slump on it for hours (i.e. no sore back or butt, and head able to easily reach the headrest without having to lean/snap backwards to do so),
and also allow me to easily + freely sleep / recline on it via the "butterfly tilt" mechanism - where the whole L-shaped seat tilts back instead of just the back)
b) It should NOT be made out of fucking "PU Leather" (as I'd have the same problem again in 2-3 years, with yet more bulky trash to find a way to dispose of, along with having to deal with all the flaky mess in the meantime)
TBH, I don't care now whether it's real leather or fabric. But this fake plasticy leather alternative is definitely out (and I strongly urge you to avoid these too for ANY products you may be considering getting)
c) Needs to have a gas cylinder that would put the seat at at-least 50cm (and would have weight rating to sustain that, to not degrade over time).
It seems that pretty much all newer seats are NOT being made with suitable ones (either they are too low - i.e. usual situation; OR they are don't have their weigh capacity I'd like to have a safety margin on it failing and repeatedly sinking below a usable height)
Also, I'll get onto this later, but WHY is it that they don't make recliner chairs that sit MUCH higher off the ground?! (It is a serious mystery why so much of the world is built + designed for mystical MIDGETS! Gah!)
d) I want *long* padded armrests at decent/adjustable height + a headrest (suitably positioned high up and forward-facing) that I can easily reach it when leaning back for a nap
e) Does not give me back pain after sitting on it - either just a < 5 minutes trial, or after sitting on it doing work for a ~10 minutes
f) It should be built to last (i.e. should be able to take daily punishment for >= 10 years) vs failing in 2 years
g) For bonus points, it should come fully assembled (vs trying to mate bottom-back cushions and arm rests together... ugh! The last three I've build were physically-taxing *hell* on that front)
At least in my corner of the world, a chair matching ALL of these requirements does NOT exist on the market today. I know, as I've gone through the various shops trying all the ones they have on offer. (There were a few others seemingly matching a good subset of these that I've been interested in trying, but no one *ever* seems to have them on display - in a few cases, they actually left the showrooms like the day before I got there)
Every time I see the mass of multicolored cable bundles behind the dashboards of cars and planes, and also the trouble that folks go to to not only access those areas to begin with (i.e. pretzel sausage origami, plus effectively dismantling the whole interior - stripping away panels / etc.), but to then make tweaks + fixes (i.e. tracing what each cable does and where it goes, etc.), I'm glad I decided to stay away from DIY-ing any stuff like that OR working in fields that do it.
The SWE part of me wonders why they don't just like simplify everything to like aggregate all the cables into bigger feeder boxes for each subsystem that then only export a single cable that goes to a central thing that delegates throughout the rest of the systems... then you'd maybe only have ~5 (?) fat cables to deal with?
Then again, if they did that, that removes a lot of the redundancy and systems isolation (i.e. single direct circuits!) we kindof expect safety critical systems to have 😬