248 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
248 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Tom MacWright
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tom@macwright.com
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[2]Tom MacWright
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• [3]Writing⇠
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• [4]Reading
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• [5]Photos
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• [6]Projects
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• [7]Drawings
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• [8]Micro
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• [9]About
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Recently
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I skipped Recently last month. This one’s even more of a grab-bag than usual!
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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The <video> element and browser abstractions
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I was reading [10]Iván Sánchez Ortega’s thoughts on maps4html (at the time of
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writing, his website is down, so that’s an archive.org link). The post is about
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a theoretical HTML element that embeds a map on a webpage - something that Iván
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is skeptical of and [11]I am as well. But this section really got me thinking:
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The user experience for video back in the day, both for the user (“I have
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to download what and install it where?”) and the web developer (user agent
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sniffing plus an <object> inside an <embed> with a MJPG fallback in the
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form of a <img>) was quite abismal (sic). A <video> element back then made
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sense.
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So let’s fast-forward ten years, and see what <video> has really brought
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us. For me, three things spring to mind:
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1. Chunked video
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2. DRM (in the form of EME).
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3. Consistent UI, then inconsistent UI back again.
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This is clear in hindsight but I had never really connected the pieces – the
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rise of standardized streaming video has also enabled DRM to be so commonplace.
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I can no longer take screenshots of Netflix, which was something that I used to
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[12]love to do. There are good tools for [13]downloading YouTube videos, but
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the same won’t exist for Hulu or HBO Max, and once a TV show declines to renew
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its streaming license, it’ll be inaccessible.
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I think this is a really interesting point: the standardization of the element
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meant that video decoding and UI would be part of the browser rather than the
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application, which allowed for strong copy-protection to be standard, and
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shifted power away from users. It makes me think twice about standardizing more
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elements of the web.
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Maps are what the [14]maps4html project wants to standardize, but argument is
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basically the same for cryptocurrency boosters (those who remain). They argue
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that the web was missing a “payments primitive” and it should be implemented at
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a protocol level. I don’t even agree with their goals (this current level of
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capitalist dystopia is enough, thank you very much, we don’t need to
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financialize any more stuff, please), but I also don’t feel great about the
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means of accomplishing those goals - embedding an opinionated currency and
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transaction system into standard technology.
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Part of the same thought bubble: is the web as a low-level abstraction of basic
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HTML elements and raw JavaScript on which the developer brings their own
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higher-level abstractions (web frameworks, or previously, Flash?), more
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egalitarian or free than a web with higher-level abstractions that are dictated
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by browsers and operating systems?
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Leverage
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Historically, a key way to turn mediocre investments into good investments
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has been to apply leverage. That’s not a recommendation; that’s a
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historical analysis, and it comes with survivorship bias.
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This [15]blog post from Lyn Alden is a compelling and risqué unified theory of
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investing. She claims that real estate, stock, and bond investments are all
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pretty bad in the long run, and that taking leverage is actually a historically
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winning strategy because it shorts your fiat currency and amplifies your
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exposure to the other thing.
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Within the context of the fiat currency system, it has been both
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quantifiably workable and socially acceptable to own real estate with
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5-to-1 or even 10-to-1 leverage. People who are not professional investors
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will routinely put 20% down and borrow 80% of the value of a home, with
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various options to increase that to 10/90 in some cases, because we set up
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our financial system around this being a normal thing to do.
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This is a good point that I never stop mentioning – mortgages are complicated
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and risky investments. Sometimes not as risky for the borrower but [16]always
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risky).
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BeOS & Haiku
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I love the BeOS and Haiku icons and designs? They really are something. I’ve
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always had a love for the [17]Mac OS 8 look, but [18]BeOS is just beautiful: it
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has some of the strong colors of Windows, but used in a different way. And the
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icons…
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BeOS icons
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From [19]guidebookgallery.org. By the way: did you know about the [20]
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image-rendering: pixelated CSS option?
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And then look at [21]the icons from Haiku, the successor to BeOS:
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HaikuOS icons
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I’m not going to go as far as actually running these operating systems, but
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man, it all reminds me of a day when computers felt so much more focused and
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personal.
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Bikes are electric now
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I’ve been biking more recently, and getting ready for a small Labor Day bike
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trip through Long Island. Eventually, when I have time (ha!) I want to do some
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much longer trips. I’ve been spending a bit more time getting reacquainted with
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the state of bicycles. In my lifetime, there have been a bunch of big changes
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for high-end bikes:
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• Disc brakes replaced V-brakes, even for some road bikes
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• Tubeless tires replaced tires with tubes for most bikes
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• Wheels got bigger and most mountain bikes are 29ers or above
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I’ve mostly been on board with these things - the bigger wheels were obviously
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an upgrade from day one, especially.
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The weird new thing is electronic shifting, which is apparently becoming the
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norm. It’s a pretty odd turn, if you ask me: your bike as a little wireless
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electronic network in which the shifter on the handlebars connects to a motor
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in the derailleur.
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It’s nice to see though, from some ‘bike influencers’, a [22]pushback and some
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people even going back to [23]non-indexed shifters so they can use any kind of
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mech drivetrain.
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I think that when I get a midlife-crisis bike, there’s a decent chance it’ll be
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electric, partly because it allows for fewer cables to route, which would make
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mounting [24]bikepacking bags a little easier. But ‘running out of power’ in
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the middle of the woods, or just having ‘firmware’ installed on my bicycle
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creeps me out.
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Running
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The 5k season continues. So far this summer: 21:00, 21:01, 20:27, 21:26. My
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goal is sub-20, which should be achievable (I’ve run it before in previous
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seasons), but mostly the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Last night’s race
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(21:26) was in 83°F, 68% humidity. Shoutout to singlets for helping me survive
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the heat. I picked up a [25]Bakline one and have been impressed. I see [26]
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Tracksmith gear constantly, and it’s good too, but I fear that some of these
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running brands are getting a ‘fashion brand’ markup.
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It’s hard to compete with DC and San Francisco as running cities. The DC region
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is [27]the ‘fittest’ in the country there are great trails in Rock Creek Park
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and super wide sidewalks in some neighborhoods. San Francisco has [28]
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spectacular hills and trails that can convince you that you’re really in the
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wild. New York’s sidewalks have far fewer cars parked on them than San
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Francisco’s, but you always need to look where you’re going. The sights are
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better, in my opinion: while SF’s hills look cool in the distance, there’s
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nothing like seeing the skyscrapers of Manhattan or running across the Brooklyn
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Bridge.
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New York’s running culture is great. There are tons of running clubs, and there
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are so many races to pick from. San Francisco had a [29]free weekly 5k called
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Park Run (part of a global network of events), but it was cancelled in 2020.
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Brooklyn doesn’t have a Park Run, but it has the [30]Al Goldstein race series,
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which is about $15, competitive, and well-run.
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CityStrides
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I’ve competed 10.24% of Brooklyn so far on [31]CityStrides: progress has
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stalled because I’ve been just running Prospect Park loops over and over again
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to get in shape for 5ks.
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Listening
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[32]Jessie Mae Hemphill by Jessie Mae Hemphill
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I started listening to brat but was disappointed. The biggest find of the last
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few months has been [33]Jessie Mae Hemphill, who I embarrassingly discovered
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because her song ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ came on the rotation in a Chipotle.
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Reading
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Oh man, [34]The World Beyond Your Head was such a read. It’s hard to summarize.
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In hindsight, I’m not even sure what it was about the book that hooked me -
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there were a few loosely-connected topics, each of which was really compelling.
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It made me think a lot. Hell of a book.
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Watching
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[35]Kinds of Kindness was great: I’ve now watched [36]29% of Yorgos Lanthimos
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films and love his style.
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August 1, 2024 [37]Tom MacWright ([38]@tmcw, [39]@tmcw@mastodon.social)
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References:
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[1] https://macwright.com/
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[2] https://macwright.com/
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[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
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[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
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[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
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[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
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[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
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[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
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[9] https://macwright.com/about/
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[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20230205201150/https://ivan.sanchezortega.es/politics/2020/09/01/mapml-essay-part4-thumbs-up-for-document-accesibility.html
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[11] https://gist.github.com/tmcw/c17eec41deaec8f8f7b3d8bd38420a27
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[12] https://www.are.na/tom-macwright/subtitles-1528478762
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[13] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
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[14] https://github.com/Maps4HTML
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[15] https://www.lynalden.com/most-investments-are-bad/
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[16] https://byrnehobart.medium.com/the-30-year-mortgage-is-an-intrinsically-toxic-product-200c901746a
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[17] https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macos80
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[18] https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/beos5
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[19] https://guidebookgallery.org/guis/beos
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[20] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rendering
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[21] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/post-your-haiku-screenshot/3064?page=4
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[22] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAV9XvzB0eQ
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[23] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqMyvObJqnk
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[24] https://bikepacking.com/
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[25] https://www.bakline.nyc/
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[26] https://www.tracksmith.com/
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[27] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/07/25/arlington-dc-fittest-cities/
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[28] https://macwright.com/hills/
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[29] https://www.parkrun.us/crissyfield/
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[30] https://runsignup.com/Race/NY/Brooklyn/AlGoldsteinSummerSpeedSeries
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[31] https://citystrides.com/
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[32] https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/album/jessie-mae-hemphill
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[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Mae_Hemphill
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[34] https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
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[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinds_of_Kindness
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[36] https://letterboxd.com/director/yorgos-lanthimos/
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[37] https://macwright.com/about/
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[38] https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=tmcw&user_id=1458271
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[39] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw
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