Silas Jelley's Corner of the Web / Linkshttps://silasjelley.com/feeds/links//icon/48.icoSilas Jelleyreply@silasjelley.com2023-04-29T23:11:22ZDaniel Lawrence Lu, DLLUtag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:1efe03b5-02b8-4831-b5c4-fc311afb407c2023-04-29T23:43:22Z2023-04-29T23:43:22Z
<p>Just came across Daniel Lawrence Lu’s website and I find it beautiful.</p>
<p>The spartan but complete design, the side barred figure captions, the simple but effective animated icon.</p>
<p>His home brew markup language, <a href="https://daniel.lawrence.lu/programming/dllup/">DLLUP</a> is of interest to me too. Having just kicked the tires of Djot and been very pleased with it I’m not in need of another change just yet, but the matching of markup to a person’s self expression is important to me and not something I intend to stop exploring.</p>
<p>He also has a post on using a <a href="https://daniel.lawrence.lu/blog/y2022m01d27/">Raspberry Pi as a timelapse camera</a>, something I’ve wanted to do for some time.</p>
<p>Discovered Daniel via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35729232">this HN thread</a> that has a number of wonderful gems in it.</p>
11:43pm on April 29, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Daniel Lawrence Lu, DLLU”">Reply via email</a></p>
Wouter Groeneveld, Cool Things People Do With Their Blogstag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:cb06dc88-e79e-4169-8653-2b0764869c7c2023-04-19T20:43:30Z2023-04-19T20:43:30Z
<p>We all see the world a little differently and, in ways both large and small, who we are is reflected in everything we do. Still, much of the world — and the web in particular — can seem to have been reduced to the generic, a sea of identical templates.</p>
<p>I like seeing what people do with their personal sites when they reach the limits of the template, out beyond the edge of the map is where people really find their voice, where the act of expression truly meets with the medium of that expression and the two grow together.</p>
<p>Some people step into that liminal zone of creativity with pencils and pens, others with clay, wood, oils, watercolours, pots and pans, <a href="/2023/04/19/210842" title="John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972">light and time</a>,</p>
<p>Some of the links in Wouter’s roundup of <em>cool things</em> reach for that lofty goal, of expressing something outside the plain template of a piece of software.</p>
8:43pm on April 19, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Wouter Groeneveld, Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs”">Reply via email</a></p>
When you have the right building in the wrong locationtag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0cd8123f-6913-47b3-a4cf-232d0fd45d272023-04-19T17:49:37Z2023-04-19T17:49:37Z
<p>So you have a building (nice for some!), you like the building, but you realise that you’ve put your building in the wrong place. It’s not a million miles from where you want it though, you could throw a stone from where it is to where you want it, so that’s nice. But it does weigh 11,000 tons (22 million pounds), (which I’ve been told is quite heavy). Oh, and it’s facing the wrong way.</p>
<video controls=""><source src="/library/images/1930-moving-of-the-bell-building.mp4"/></video>
<p>What would Kurt Vonnegut do? I don’t know, but I can tell you what his father (also called Kurt Vonnegut) did, he lifted it up, moved it a bit, and then rotated it 90 degrees. A building.</p>
<p>It took 600 workers less than 30 days, in the winter of 1930, to do all this. And during the whole manoeuvre the building continued to operate as a telephone exchange.</p>
<blockquote>Gas, electric heat, water and sewage were maintained to the building all during the move. The 600 workers entered and left the traveling structure using a sheltered passageway that moved with the building. The employees never felt the building move and telephone service went on without interruption. <a href="https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2014/01/07/indiana-bell/4354705/">IndyStar</a></blockquote>
<p>Or if you prefer video, see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGegneT9KfQ">Moving the Indiana Bell Central Office</a> by Telephone Collectors International, that has much more footage, photography, and commentary.</p>
<p>For another entry in the category of ‘right building, wrong location’ take a look at how a <a href="https://archive.is/SYYA9">How a 7,000-Ton Broadway Theater Was Hoisted 30 Feet</a> in the middle of Manhattan.</p>
<p>And finally (for now) an entry from San Francisco, <a href="https://www.opensfhistory.org/osfhcrucible/2021/02/28/the-journey-of-commerce-high-a-closer-look/">The Journey of Commerce High: A Closer Look</a></p>
<figure><img alt="The 1913 moving of Commerce High School" src="/library/images/1913-07-11_van-ness-and-grove.jpg"/><figcaption>
<blockquote>View north on Van Ness toward Grove, Commerce High School (Newton J. Tharp Commercial School) being moved. The building was just completed at Grove and Polk when plans for the the new Civic Center were finalized. Rather than demolishing it, it was moved from the site to the northeast corner of Fell and Franklin, where it still stands in 2021.</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.opensfhistory.org/osfhcrucible/2021/02/28/the-journey-of-commerce-high-a-closer-look/">OpenSFHistory</a></p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p>If you know of any other similar sagas, please send them my way <a href="mailto:reply\@silasjelley.com">reply@silasjelley.com</a> I’d love to hear about them.</p>
5:49pm on April 19, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“When you have the right building in the wrong location”">Reply via email</a></p>
Technological Antisolutionstag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:c8bff73f-0d00-4569-84d6-27c4e970abae2023-04-19T16:31:59Z2023-04-19T16:31:59Z
<p>I like Jamie’s definition for a Technological Antisolution. If you’ve found yourself looking at a piece software/technology thinking “that’s a solution in search of a problem”, then you’ve encountered one yourself, hell some of us have even built a couple.</p>
<p>He goes on to link to several great examples of such anti-solutions, so click through or use the links below.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/08/they-are-turning-our-atmosphere-into-their-atmosphere/">“They are turning OUR atmosphere into THEIR atmosphere.”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/02/autonomous-murderbots-still-going-great/">Autonomous murderbots still going great</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/06/apartheid-emerald-mine-space-karens-autopilot-conveniently-shuts-off-one-second-before-impact/">Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen’s autopilot conveniently shuts off one second before impact.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/google-says-it-is-good-for-their-business-if-their-competitors-cars-kill-more-people/">Google says it is good for their business if their competitors’ cars kill more people.</a></li>
</ul>
4:31pm on April 19, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Technological Antisolutions”">Reply via email</a></p>
Thoughts on, and beyond markdowntag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0f5b2fd4-3dd3-4eb1-977d-7dcc650a50772023-04-17T13:37:18Z2023-04-17T13:37:18Z
<p>As I add progressively more structure to the ‘data’ that backs this website — more strictly defining relationships between documents — it makes sense to consider what the constraining effects the use of any given markup format has on my ability to encode (and subsequently, decode) document structure, intra-document relationships, etc.</p>
<p>Knut makes a pretty thorough summary of markdowns defects, his thoughts about it being “a hassle to parse and validate, even with great tooling” echoes my same feeling.</p>
<p>I agree that block centric editing experiences offer a solution to many of markdowns painful limitations, but it’s an evolution that must be pursued carefully, I love the accessibility of plaintext.</p>
<p>John MacFarlane explored similar territory in <a href="https://johnmacfarlane.net/beyond-markdown.html">Beyond Markdown</a></p>
<p>I’m exploring this same space in my own projects. Relevant proposals:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/2023/04/07/152328" title="SEP 13: Switch to a more reasonable source markup language | April 2023">SEP 13: Switch to a more reasonable source markup language</a></li>
<li><a href="/2023/04/16/223127" title="SEP 42: Expose Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) | April 2023">SEP 42: Expose Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)</a></li>
</ul>
1:37pm on April 17, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Thoughts on, and beyond markdown”">Reply via email</a></p>
The Universal Studios firetag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:39c086f7-0ba6-4c3a-9f35-22ac42856b552023-04-17T11:04:11Z2023-04-17T11:04:11Z
<p>A good reminder that data integrity requires a defence-in-depth approach. No amount of building scale climate control, careful pest control, encoding data to long lived archive media, security practices, recovery drills, etc etc will stop your house/nas/locker/warehouse burning to the ground.</p>
11:04am on April 17, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“The Universal Studios fire”">Reply via email</a></p>
Ryan J. A. Murhpy, When and how to publish notes: Publishing thinking effectively and efficiently, 2023tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:cc3f83eb-a322-4d0b-8064-44956636a0a22023-04-16T23:57:40Z2023-04-16T23:57:40Z
<p>Some good notes on this practice of public note taking that a growing number of us seem to be taking an interest in. Annoyingly Ryan links heavily to Discord chats to supplement the article, effectively gating the supplemental material.</p>
<p>Always good to see other references to <a href="https://andymatuschak.org">Andy Matushchak</a> out in the wild too.</p>
11:57pm on April 16, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Ryan J. A. Murhpy, When and how to publish notes: Publishing thinking effectively and efficiently, 2023”">Reply via email</a></p>
URL Design is API Designtag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:91ad9fa1-a3d2-42db-a2fa-062892035aa92023-04-16T23:43:48Z2023-04-16T23:43:48Z
<p>I think a lot about URLs, certainly more than is reasonable. Mapping URL structure to mental models — rather than the other way round — is important to me. APIs (and URLs are an API) should aim to make this natural.</p>
<p>Pinning this as a resource as the API surface of this site expands (see <a href="/2022/07/12/102610" title="SEP 1: URL traversal/scoping/discovery | July 2022">SEP 1: URL traversal/scoping/discovery</a>).</p>
11:43pm on April 16, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“URL Design is API Design”">Reply via email</a></p>
Atomic Designtag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:c4a5e52d-ea79-49f3-bd33-f3a95d5c3b902023-04-14T23:01:10Z2023-04-14T23:01:10Z
<p>A seminal piece on designing for the web, widely referenced since being published in June, 2013.</p>
<p>Brad has expanded his writing on the subject into a book by the same name, <a href="https://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/table-of-contents/">available to read online here</a></p>
11:01pm on April 14, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Atomic Design”">Reply via email</a></p>
That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seentag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:ee9138af-2818-478e-85eb-be2adc7619cb2023-04-12T10:17:32Z2023-04-12T10:17:32Z
<p>Notable for introducing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window">The Parable of the broken window</a>.</p>
10:17am on April 12, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen”">Reply via email</a></p>
Ask Culture meets Guess Culturetag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b0755ac0-d09c-4527-bd82-6772996715f82023-04-09T22:44:47Z2023-04-09T22:44:47Z
<p>Culture, the embedding of norms/ideas into a place/relationship/society/etc, enthrals me.</p>
<p>Cultures are emergent, responsive to history, geography, climate, fortune, adversity. Culture is the sum of place and people, and a people are the product of culture, and a place is borne of (and reinforces) both people and culture, round and around in a fascinating and nauseatingly infinite loop of achingly slow iteration and sometimes deafening inertia. Cultures represent stability — good and bad — they are the seemingly unshakable bedrock of society, until they crumble.</p>
<p>Culture can exist between two people or eight billion, Culture is present at the scale of individual cells all the way up the relations of nations. It is everything, and it is everywhere. But what makes a culture?</p>
<p>It’s almost midnight, I’ve barely slept for two days — for good reasons, don’t worry. I’m in no fit state to answer a question of such unbounded consequence but all I’m really getting at is that I just read <em>something</em>: buried deep in a far away forum, a reply (to a question of no particular interest), written by a user called <em>tangerine</em>, that introduced me to a whole new lens for looking at culture, particularly at the scale of nations.</p>
<p>What happens when Ask Culture meets Guess Culture? And what other similar dichotomic comparisons can be drawn between cultures large and small?</p>
<p>Goodnight.</p>
<p>Somewhat related: <a href="https://geekstravelinjapan.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/the-one-thing-i-cant-stand-about-teaching-english-in-japan/">The One Thing I Can’t Stand About Teaching English In Japan</a></p>
10:44pm on April 9, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Ask Culture meets Guess Culture”">Reply via email</a></p>
Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Mythtag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:3c8f67ee-8bf5-448c-8524-455839eb1d9b2023-03-23T12:34:37Z2023-03-23T12:34:37Z
<p>I can be a bit of a puritan when it comes to software and the proliferation of ‘bloatware’ — software whose function doesn’t seem proportionate to its consumption — but Joel makes a reasonable and compelling counter, that software is not bloating significantly when viewed in the full context of its existence.</p>
<p>And he made this argument 22 years ago today! Whether that makes his rationale more or less compelling is for each reader to decide, but the years have done nothing to diminish the clarity with which he expressed that reasoning and I’m glad to have stumbled across it again. When I read it first, probably six or seven years ago, I was unconvinced. Reading it again today I’m less sure, so thank you Joel.</p>
12:34pm on March 23, 2023 from Bristol, South West England, United Kingdom<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth”">Reply via email</a></p>
I Am the Ghost Heretag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:22d7186e-5271-43b3-a495-7a831fbef3352023-01-18T19:27:53Z2023-01-18T19:27:53Z
<p>I’ve never read anything quite like this before. It’s fiction, that’s not new. It’s a short story, but I’ve read plenty of those before. Yet somehow I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. I loved it. I feel moved by it though I don’t know quite how. It feels extremely real.</p>
<p>The experience of watching a brother become something I don’t recognise is deeply, painfully familiar.</p>
<p>Parents unfit for one another, I’ve felt that too, that pressure cooker.</p>
7:27pm on January 18, 2023 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“I Am the Ghost Here”">Reply via email</a></p>
R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:4113ee01-1e6e-4003-8342-958e16777dc52022-12-12T21:57:08Z2022-12-12T21:57:08Z
<p>A short bit of writing that captures part, a fading part, of the tapestry of the web. Deeply nostalgic for a less corporate, more anarchic web, a web I can’t claim to have ever truly known, but one for which I too yearn.</p>
9:57pm on December 12, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008”">Reply via email</a></p>
I Don’t Want to Be an Internet Persontag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:eb52ebf0-63ec-45a3-8431-81263fad237e2022-12-08T12:26:27Z2022-12-08T12:26:27Z
<blockquote>Trying to stay off the internet feels like pushing back against a wave.</blockquote>
<p>That quote captures a bit of my relationship with the internet. It’s just so captivating, so hard to look away from.</p>
<blockquote>Everyone knows someone who has lost a piece of themselves to the internet. They latch onto a digital community and start to think it’s the whole world.</blockquote>
<p>Yeah, I know a few like that.</p>
<blockquote>Everyone loves the idea of the internet. The live wire—touch it and watch the world flash before your eyes. In the late 1970s, home computers only had primitive internet precursors like phone-in BBS forums, but people bought them anyway because they liked the idea of being connected. Everyone together, all at once.</blockquote>
<p>That’s what sucked us all in. Everyone together, all at once. What a promise. And as time passes more people start to believe it. Never mind that it’s patently untrue, never mind that even with more than 5 billion people online<a href="#fn1" id="fnref1" role="doc-noteref"><sup>1</sup></a> we’ll never communicate with more than a handful of them. All that matters is that maybe we could. It’s electric, captivating, tantalizing. It’s bollocks. Because the venn-diagram of <em>very-online</em> and <em>very-interesting</em> has a vanishingly small overlap.</p>
<blockquote>Being online today mostly means constantly performing your personality—or whatever online schtick you develop. Liking is a personal endorsement. You post iPhone photography of yourself, or of your family and friends. You write mini-essays about your beliefs. Most of us go on and try to present the best version of ourselves. Because this is the future, whether we like it or not.</blockquote>
<p>5 billion people trapped in a race to conform.</p>
<blockquote>Their real lives, their better lives, were somewhere online. Seeing them in person felt like an intrusion.</blockquote>
<p>So many zombies.</p>
<blockquote>I am not afraid of Charlie because he writes extreme, offensive things online. I am afraid of him because I recognize so many of his proclivities in regular people—the shifting eyes, the formless references and mental absence. If you spend all of your time consuming internet culture, you are consuming stories and myths and personalities that only exist online. To curate your online presence is to give up a piece of your physical self, to live in a simulated universe of your own creation.</blockquote>
<p>The scariest thing isn’t how strange it all seems, but rather how much less strange it is than it seemingly ought to be.</p>
<blockquote>You can close the computer, but the world will go on without you.</blockquote>
<p>Davis’ article was interesting, but not great. It’s written for a very credulous reader, and falls apart a little due to the mismatch between the apparently neutral voice but the heavy handed judgement within, which is a shame because there is some really good writing in it.</p>
<section role="doc-endnotes"><hr/>
<ol>
<li id="fn1"><p><a href="https://datareportal.com/global-digital-overview">Digital Around the World</a><a href="#fnref1" role="doc-backlink">↩︎</a></p></li>
</ol>
</section>
12:26pm on December 8, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“I Don’t Want to Be an Internet Person”">Reply via email</a></p>
Semantic linefeeds, a writing aidtag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:3b69d88a-9d69-4e18-b919-0c2044143ceb2022-07-14T14:17:30Z2022-07-14T14:17:30Z
<blockquote>Start each sentence on a new line. Make lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after commas and semicolons, rather than randomly. Since most people change documents by rewriting phrases and adding, deleting and rearranging sentences, these precautions simplify any editing you have to do later.<br/><cite>— Brian W. Kernighan, 1974</cite></blockquote>
<p>I’ve read Brandon Rhodes’ <em><a href="https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/">Semantic Linefeeds</a></em> a few times over the years, usually having been linked to it by another writer. The practice generally finds its way into some of my writing, but never quite sticks.</p>
<p>For the unfamiliar, a linefeed is a carriage-return. Terms of art from the age of typewriters which we more often call line breaks in the digital age. When Rhodes talks about semantic linefeeds he’s suggesting that the linefeed, like any other feature of presentation, should be used first and foremost as a tool for establishing meaning, and only secondarily as a means of applying aesthetic order.</p>
<p>Well, I came across it again this morning as I re-read Gwern Branwen’s <a href="https://www.gwern.net/Design#tools">design document</a> and all afternoon I have been writing in this style, perhaps I’ll stick with it this time.</p>
2:17pm on July 14, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Semantic linefeeds, a writing aid”">Reply via email</a></p>
Travel in the time of coronavirustag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b9a9acfc-becd-466d-b140-4f01d5b4599a2022-07-11T18:44:57Z2022-07-11T18:44:57Z
<p><em>Title derivative of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera">Love in the Time of Cholera</a> by Gabriel García Márquez</em></p>
<p>Craig Mod is young and healthy. Still, covid hit him “like a kick to the throat”. He avoided it for twenty-eight months. Almost no sooner had he left Japan, his cocoon of two and a half years, did ‘rona take him for a ride. Soon I too will leave my cocoon, New Zealand, headed for the very same country Craig did so fatefully – England, my <em>home</em>.</p>
<p>Covid-19 reached New Zealand 864 days ago, and so far I have evaded it. It will find me eventually, but I won’t help it along. Avoiding the virus here in New Zealand has not been particularly arduous, life has been only minimally disrupted when compared to most other countries which saw less cohesive responses to the outbreak. Indeed life has gone on almost as normal outside of our two comparatively short lockdowns.</p>
<p>Things become less certain as homeward travel becomes more so. But five years away is long enough, it is time to go back, even if it means going a few rounds with this sobering supergerm.</p>
<p>Through the looking glass of this pandemic, and his bout with the bug that left him feeling like he had been “beaten by a dock worker”, Craig questions the justification for travel.</p>
<blockquote>The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, “better” of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. I’ve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. It feels like some consumerist, un-curious notion of travel was seeded long ago and, like a zombie fungus, has mind controlled everyone to four specific canals in Venice. To a single painting at the Louvre. To three streets and a square in Manhattan. To a few rickety back alleys around Gion.<br/><cite>— From <em><a href="https://craigmod.com/roden/069/">Covid</a></em> by Craig Mod</cite></blockquote>
<p>It’s hard to argue with that. Hard, but not impossible. Because there can be more than that. Craig knows this, he knows it deeply. He’s <a href="https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/144/">scratched beneath those “four specific canals in Venice”</a>, he’s <a href="https://craigmod.com/essays/walk_japan/">vagabonded the full span of the Tōkaidō</a> connecting us to the texture of its 400 year history, he’s <a href="https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/116/">explored how travel itself is a creative tool</a>. In spite of his covid induced doubt, Craig has shown us that motion, and its less subtle cousin <em>travel</em>, are powerful tools for thinking, growing, and creating. So long as we are <a href="https://craigmod.com/essays/looking_closely/">looking closely</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, I need to believe that, for I mean to travel again. Slowly, in my own way, under my own steam, but travel I will. First home, then away again.</p>
6:44pm on July 11, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Travel in the time of coronavirus”">Reply via email</a></p>
Why is CSS such a poor language for layout?tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:3fa5997e-464a-4cc5-9a79-36d5386943082022-06-13T10:58:16Z2022-06-13T10:58:16Z
<p>In <a href="http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-note-on-layout-language/">A Note on Layout Language</a> Richard Mitton gets to the root of why CSS has always felt so clunky as a language for visual layout. It was built to style, its design and its fundamental primitives are suited to that. Layout calls for a different grammar that the cascade is unable to convincingly contort itself into.</p>
<p>How many man hours could have been saved globally if the web had been birthed with a more appropriate layout language based on prepositions rather than the INI style key-value list we got?</p>
10:58am on June 13, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Why is CSS such a poor language for layout?”">Reply via email</a></p>
A couple cool contemporary contributions to chaostag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:4a1ede28-e82b-4dd5-9c95-9e19ef6c12e02022-06-12T12:24:48Z2022-06-12T12:24:48Z
<p>Hey you! Why not point your web browser over to <a href="https://pointerpointer.com">Pointer Pointer</a>?</p>
<p>Sometimes I rail against skeuomorphia, but there exist a few folks out there who do it so well, with such love and craft as to demand adoration. [Simone and his computer][] are exactly that: beautiful skeuomorphic artistry. It even has a bloody screensaver!</p>
<p>What would be the most engaging way to showcase the workings of a watch via the web? Lots of macro photography? A tastefully put together video? <a href="https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/">Bartosz Ciechanowski has a better idea</a>.</p>
12:24pm on June 12, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“A couple cool contemporary contributions to chaos”">Reply via email</a></p>
Your native language affects how you see this imagetag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:cc1b7529-d083-4855-ad84-6766ff47a81b2022-06-12T11:09:41Z2022-06-12T11:09:41Z
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<img alt="The symbol for the “Fast Pass” service at Shanghai Disney Resort, via <https://arun.is/blog/your-native-language/>" height="1066" src="/library/images/misc/2017-06-05_your-native-language-affects-how-you-see-this-image.webp" width="1600"/></picture>
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<p><a href="https://www.arun.is/blog/your-native-language/">Arun makes a small but beautiful bi-lingual observation</a>. How much more depth could be unravelled if we could build better bridges between cultures that don’t depend on one or both sides diluting themselves. How much beauty and creativity is being lost today to the ravages of English asserting itself upon the world.</p>
<p>Nuance isn’t profitable, death to nuance. Diversity of language is nuance, death to language. What else must die in service of ease and the big squeeze.</p>
<p>What kind of world will my children wander, what more will we have lost by then.</p>
11:09am on June 12, 2022 from Nelson, New Zealand<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Your native language affects how you see this image”">Reply via email</a></p>