Category: misc

Twitter 10k

Twitter seems likely to announce an increase in its post character count, upwards from 140, sometime in the next few months. For many it'll be a welcome move, especially given that 140 characters is artificially restrictive – a holdover from the time Twitter ran on the back of SMS messaging.

140's all very well, encourages people to be concise, and gives just enough space for a status update or headline and link; but the fact that alternative services exist to increase the character count (after a quick redirect outside Twitter) means the time has come to grow the posts.

10,000 characters is of course a rumour, based on the same limit already existing within direct messages (I've not tried it.) Whilst it seems to me to be ridiculously excessive (I struggle to fill a 2048-character App.net personal message) is seems (Internet speculation) that only the first 140 characters of a Tweet will be shown in the standard timeline…

Phew, I'm glad they seem to be thinking of retaining the same level of scrolling I'd need to reach the top!

So, post length and the timeline out of the way, what's next to like?

Editing!*

Dropping an edit button into the laps of the majority of users is playing with fire. Most will admit the ability to edit a post must be included for 10k posts. I'm inclined to agree, but only because I can trust myself not to change the context of my posts after a 'negative' reply or one from a user I simply don't like.

An edit, by the way, is not the same as a delete and retweet; an edit preserves the flow of a conversation, a delete leaves a telltale gap.

Most users are content to post, to chat, to look at kitten pics. Most simply won't spot, nor care about, the 'Edited' indicator. Outrage is bound to follow.

My summary of a 10k limit: meh.

What I'd like to see is a Facebook Groups-like feature. No, not lists with every tweet public, but a community builder. Reduce the character count to a reasonable 4096 (a more sociable level) drop a shed load of metadata in each post, make me happy. Heck, I'd pay to remove the ads and user tracking across the rest of the web, but I can't see Twitter or especially Facebook relinquishing their monetisers.

Can you?

*I reserve the right to edit this post.

ADNHackDay

App.net's @lukasros asked a couple of days ago:

"Hello people of App.net! What do you think about having another #ADNHackDay / #CommunityHackDay?
Pinging @matigo @33mhz @duerig @ryantharp @flashblu @adnfuture @pamdavis @jvimedia @cgiffard @blumenkraft and everyone else."

The weekend of January 30/31 has been proposed. And I'm vaguely excited!

"Vaguely" because, as you're probably already aware, I'm not a developer not even a hobbyist coder. It didn't stop me creating a thing that came to its ultimate* fruition only after the weekend I participated. But it was good to watch the evolution of stuff and, though I'd imagine there's no substitute for being in the same room as people working feverishly to complete a hack, it was good enough for me.

No, I don't know what I'm going to do, or what I'm capable of. And that's what the inspiration of a community of like-minded, though far better than me at their fields, people will imbue in me. Confidence. Or fear, too early to say.

Or… I'll just read the recap. Dunno yet!

*It's really not that good. And it has the niche-cubed appeal factor.

ThemeMonday 2016 January 11

In a new departure, I'm experimenting with a blog post to call ADN to choose our #ThemeMonday theme for January 2016.

For more information, see the ThemeMonday page.

So here we go, please think what you'd like to see this month and tell us all. Seasonal themes, silly , sexy or serious themes; it's your ADN to shape as you will. Make the most of this opportunity!

Please reply to ADN post thread when you see it.

Thanks!

Hitler

Yesterday I posted this on App.net:

“Copyright of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf expires.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35209185

Here’s a quote from the article:

“…annotated version, with thousands of academic notes, will aim… to show that Mein Kampf is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive.”

I laughed out loud.

App.net’s (ADN’s) @blumenkraft, being German and with that country’s unique perspective, opined “it’s a peace of crap! i love they did the afford to set it into a historical context.”

To which I replied “My wife read it a few years ago, during a philosophy phase. At the time she told me pretty much what you and the article say. #NotOnMyBucketListForAReason”

ADN’s @jeremycherfas also responded: “The Economist’s article was a very good one.” So I did a quick search and came up with:

What the Führer means for Germans today: Seventy years after Adolf Hitler’s death, how Germans see him is changing. – a very interesting read.

Within that article, a reference to a novel:

“The latest bestseller is “Look Who’s Back” by Timur Vermes, translated into English this year. Hitler wakes up in today’s Berlin near his old bunker. Disoriented at first, he so amuses everybody he meets, including his Turkish dry-cleaner, that he is launched on a meteoric career as a comedian. His hip colleagues are convinced that he is a consummate “messed ekta” (Berlinish-English for method actor) offering a subtle critique of modern media culture.”

Me to Jeremy: “Thanks. On the strength of it I just grabbed a trial of ‘Look Who’s Back’ from the Kindle store.” I also added a screenshot of its cover.

I read the introduction, laughed out loud again, read chapter 1 and settled nicely into chapter 2, at which point the preview ended. So I bought it.

Jeremy had asked me to report back what I made of the trial, and upon my few disorganised words said “Good recommendation. I might even add it to my own list. In fact, I will. I take it you’ve read Robert Harris’ Fatherland?”

At this point I shall step out of conversation mode and into…

Ah, no, I hadn’t read it, but I give thanks for his recommendation, but with reservations…

My focus for the last 30-something years had been predominantly sci-fi/satire/humour. ‘History’ tends to be restricted to the facts; I’m really not a fan of historical dramatisations (TV/film, whatever, Blackadder excepted.)

Prior to puberty I’d read children’s books, then gravitated through some of the English Classics, especially the more accessible Dickens, that sort of thing; and all the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. All of ’em. I was then a voracious reader (as is my oldest daughter today.)

And then I read my first Isaac Asimov; The Early Asimov – a boxed 3-volume set, acquired second-hand from a stall on Rochdale Market. The best bit of their transactions, aside from saving money over new; a return-for-half-purchase-price when buying more. Awesome! But financial transactions aren’t as important as the power of the written word when welded to a willing mind. Mine.

That led me to a long exploration of sci-fi. Bear, E.E. (Doc) Smith, Niven/Pournelle/Barnes, more Asimov, Brin, L.Ron Hubbard (his Battlefield Earth is a great book) and, well, suffice it to say it’s a big list. All gone now apart from a selection of Niven et al, and of course my Asimovs.

I read other genres, e.g. Tolkien, e.g. shed-loads of nonfiction, but nothing compared to the impact sci-fi had on me over time – for allowing me to escape.

It takes me three passes to fully explore a novel: a first quick skim, a later slower read, and months later a final deep exploration pf what subtleties remain. No, I utterly failed to on the one book: The Lord of the Rings. I’ve ‘only’ read it twice, though I attempted a third. (I’m no Christopher Lee!)

And then, when I least expected it, my wife-to-be arrived; with cats, responsibilities, children, and a consequent loss of free time and focus.

Back to the Hitler related novel; “Quite a departure for me, this…” I said to Jeremy, “…but this is still well within my comfort zone. Just opened my wife’s copy of Mein Kampf, compared it with my Churchill’s The Second World War. Actually there’s no comparison, but I might just flick through the former after the novel.”

Honesty time: I really didn’t get far into Churchill’s tome. But I’ve dipped in on the odd occasion as documentaries have appeared on the telly. Incidentally, when I can get a visually un-truncated version of The World at War, I probably will.

2016 sounds like it’ll be the year I make the time to read my queue. No more excuses.

Semicolon

2015 was a year with a lot of downs, and I'll be glad to see its end. Really. There were of course positives, but overall zero sense of balance.

2014 was equally odd in that regard; my wife nearly died in the July and, restricting myself to social networking, I'd:

  • Messed about with Linux doing some, what I'd call, rudimentary shell script coding based on top of Ayadn – a command line client for the App.net social network,
  • Inexplicably tailed off from my initial enthusiasm with the App.net Wiki, and have struggled to retain that,
  • Told everyone I wasn't going to be using Facebook again,
  • Or Twitter.

2015, a year in review:

This year I continued my idiosyncratic approach:

  • Increasing my use of footnotes* in social media posts,
  • Adopting the Oxford Comma more widely, occasionally even abbreviating the following "and" to "&"! And, even though I know it's not its only use case, preceding only "and" gives me room to grow,
  • Starting to use the Semicolon more frequently.

This last one puzzles me. Until late this year I'd almost never used it, succumbing as I did to peer pressure during my final couple of years at school by intentionally not caring about 'English' lessons. So why now?

A desire for self-improvement perhaps?

2015 also brought:

  • A late-year increase in the frequency of my blog posts, partially in response to installing the Journey (daily) journal app on my Android phone,
  • My slow-but-sure takeover of the #ThemeMonday hashtag on App.net (page needs updating.) I make the call to choose a shortlist of themes, collate, remind, and then post a poll to get votes to pick each. It's not hard work, not really.

So, this blog post ends as the year ends, on a low note:

2015 does not get Baz's Seal of Approval; really, it's had very, very few highlights.

The only standout was a weekend trip to London with my family, my first. (Family and trip to England's capital.)

[Edit:] Ruby puppy arrived in April. Now that changes my perspective a tiny bit towards favouring 'balance.'

*I can't honestly recall when I started using footnotes, it could have been 2014.

I reserve the right to edit this post as events unfold on this, the last day of the year. Naturally I reserve the right to edit all the posts but rarely do, aside from typos.

Knife

During 2000 I visited the USA on an escorted coach tour. Part-way through we stopped at a tax-free shopping outlet; not a mall but one of those unpreposessing, drab buildings, the exteriors of which belie their contents.

I looked around for a while and, almost in desperation, bought a grey SwissCard – this newer variant on the Victorinox site is almost identical, save for the case material.

It has just enough tools to be useful whilst being thin enough to fit in my wallet:

  • nail file,
  • screwdriver,
  • toothpick,
  • tweezers,
  • pen,
  • pin,
  • blade,
  • scissors,
  • measuring scale along the side.

Though the knife is around 15 years old and though I've looked after it, it's never been sharpened since new. Which makes all the more remarkable the fact that today I stripped the wires in an extension reel cable, to repair it after our otherwise-delightful Ruby dog chewed right through the insulation.*

If only everything lasted as long.

*She's fine, it wasn't live!

Sales

The seasonal sales have already started. In fact, some have been going on, on-and-off, since the week before Black Friday.

What have we bought?

I got a shoulder bag for my wife, a vibrant red thing of the same design as her black one. A genuine half price.

The laptop she bought before the sales commenced has been reduced by the same retailer in their Boxing Day sale by a whopping £200! To exactly what she paid for it.

The Xbox One with Kinect, the thing I wanted in the Black Friday sales – the one that the day before was £350, on the day £370, and the day after dropped to £340 – is now £335. Cheaper with 3 games than without.

Crazy!

So, what do we need?

  • A TV stand.
  • Wireless printer & scanner (Canon.)
  • Coke Zero.
  • Dog food.

Not believing the hype: Easy.

Fat

I've eaten too much over the last few days. For most in the western, developed world it's an obvious thing to do at this time of year. Eat to excess, buy to excess, etc.

Me though; I haven't put weight on for years. I've tended to lose it instead. In that respect too I'm atypical.

2015 was a year of a small but consistent weight loss for me – started during #Movember 2014 and helped along by more fruit & veg, fewer slices of bread.

There's a week to go until I go back to work. Hopefully in that time normality will be restored.

Floods

Not much to say today apart from to mention the local flooding (thankfully not hyperlocal, i.e. not right here.)

The power was off for 1-1/2 hours this morning, the centre of Rochdale flooded as the River Roch burst its banks, and at the sewage works. Bury had a gas explosion, and a pub collapsed not far north…

My wife, working tonight, left her phone here. She had a couple of diversions en-route, so I'm hopeful it's an easy drive home in the morning.

It's still bloody raining!

Charitable

How do you explain to someone, without actually explaining, that you will not buy their raffle tickets (all proceeds to local charities, prizes donated by local businesses) because you already gave more than your allocation for the month?

Not an easy few words.

So I kept my few words to an absolute minimum, and yet still experienced a sense of guilt. It probably doesn't matter that I already gave to one of the beneficiary charities a few weeks ago…

Are we programmed to donate socially, judged unfairly when we don't?

Probably. And probably.

I always have picked 'my' charities to suit my history, circumstances and mood. And occasionally because my friends or acquaintances believe passionately-enough to mention them. Or in response to media-led frenzies. It's a perfect storm when all three influences coincide.

Yeah, because I'm only human.