I see Captain Dickhead is at it again
Weeknote, Sunday 27th August 2023
Being on my own is weird. Many of the things that I tend to do when Kim is at home turn out to be less attractive when I’m on my own for a longer period. For example, TV: I’ve watched almost nothing this week, which is unusual for someone who grew up nursemaided by the television.
(This is true. My mother used to say that before I could sit up on my own, she would prop me up with cushions so I could watch television, as it kept me quiet.)
I had a trip into London on Tuesday to see my old colleague Maria, who now works about five minutes walk from where I used to work – we had been that close to each other for months and not realised. It was great to catch up and – as it typical for when we meet up - what was meant to be a quick coffee ended up as nearly two hours of hilarity.
Despite my enthusiasm for Readwise Reader I have been tempted this week to dump it in favour of something more simple. However, I have a feeling that’s because I have a huge backlog of unprocessed reading in it and when I have that backlog in any system my instinct is to dump it and use another tool, starting from scratch. It’s a bad habit, so I’m making myself spend time going through and triaging what I still want to read.
And a reminder today that caffeine addiction is a fearsome thing. Since I stopped working my coffee intake has done up. Although I don’t drink any after 5pm it’s rare that I have less than six cups through the day, which is a lot. Enough, in fact, to make the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal bad. If you have never had a caffeine withdrawal it’s a reminder that it’s a physically addictive drug: for me, it manifests as a headache which nothing will shift, plus nausea. There’s nothing you can do except ride it out by lying down in a darkened room. Not nice
So of course I went out and got coffee. It still took a couple of hours to shift. By god I love coffee.
The three things which caught my attention
- Notes on being a single person Mastodon server is a good introduction to the pros and cons of running your own instance. It’s one of those things which falls into the category of “because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.
- Another thing in the same category: how Michael Moorcock wrote a novel in three days. No really, don’t do this, unless you are Michael Moorcock.
- This unpublished (till now) piece by Harry McCracken reminded me of how much work goes into journalism before you put any words on the screen. 90% of journalism happens away from your desk – or it used to. I used to say “journalism happens when you pick up the phone” and while the method of communication might have changed, the fundamental principle hasn’t.
Things I have been writing
I wrote an ending to a story and then junked it. So much for that.
Things I have been reading
The Agony and the Ego, edited by Clare Boylan, is out of print but I was lucky enough to find a copy in the University of Kent Library. It includes a wonderful essay by Hilary Mantel on her writing method, which appears pretty close to mine: it involves the steady accretion of phrases, characters and situations until something takes shape, rather than a pre-planned, heavily plotted form. Annoyingly this appears to be the only time this essay has been published – and Boylan’s book is now out of print. Copies go for about £20 secondhand.
It is always worth remembering that Steve Jobs could be a nasty piece of work when he wanted to be.
Weeknote, Sunday 20th August 2023
This has been a week of joining. First, I joined the Society of Authors. Although I’m not a published fiction writer, the body of work I have from a 28 year career as a magazine journalist counts – which means that I’m in some illustrious company.
Second, I now have a borrowers membership for the University of Kent Library, which means not only can I go along and enjoy the WiFi (you can do that for free if you want) but also borrow books – and the kind of academic books I sometimes want to read can be ferociously expensive.
This week has veered between too hot and too much rain, which is probably a harbinger of the way that British summers will be in the future. Despite my Indian DNA, I'm a northerner at heart: anything above about 23 degrees and I start to basically want to curl up and fall asleep for the hot bit. The siesta is a natural response to weather that gets too hot in the afternoon, and I expect the British to eventually embrace it.
The three things which most caught my attention
- Tim Bray has a really good review of the current state of Mastodon. It's mostly positive, and I agree with Tim that some of the things that people want (post migration) really aren't all that important. And speaking of Mastodon, StreetPass is a REALLY useful extension for finding people there.
- Elon Musk's quest to destroy Twitter continues. For me, Twitter got to the point where ethically I could no longer be part of a service which was rolling out the welcome mat to the extreme right, misogynists, abusers, racists, homophobes, transphobes, grifters and general scum bags. It’s one thing to be part of a service where they are present, but another to have an owner who actively goes out of his way to orient the service towards those users’ needs.At that point, it’s a moral question, and no amount of “value” or “usefulness” I get from that service makes a difference. So if you see me on Twitter... it's not me.
- Steve Albini used to be one of the most talented musicians and producers around, but with that came a level of assholery that was Olympic standard. He's rowed a lot of that back, and now sounds infinitely more grounded and – dare I say it – happy.
Things I have been writing
I wrote a little piece of micro-fiction which I published on Mastodon. I'm interested in doing more of this. Micro-fiction appeals to my sense of minimalism.
I also worked on a couple of exercises which might turn into stories, one about a man who is killed by a wasp and another about a man in an immense galaxy filled with humanity who goes off in search of his double.
Things I have been reading
I picked up War Bodies by Neal Asher again. Everyone needs a bit of science fiction horror in their lives, right?
Sad to hear about the death of John Warnock, who was a truly great computer scientist. His early contributions to computer graphics included breakthroughs in working out hidden surfaces, plus of course inventing PostScript which changed the world of publishing.
Unraveling the Digital Markets Act
I absolutely loved this post on Unraveling the Digital Markets Act: by the team from iA, who also make one of my favourite pieces of software.
This book sounds right up my street
Printer makers are evil, part 3422
Judge denies HP's request to dismiss printer lockdown suiit • The Register:
HP all-in-one printer owners, upset that their devices wouldn't scan or fax when low on ink, were handed a partial win in a northern California court this week after a judge denied HP's motion to dismiss their suit.
This whole story is just a brilliant example of why there is a special circle of hell reserved for printer manufacturers. And of course it’s also exactly the kind of thing that Cory has been railing against for years. Software locks to prevent you doing things with a device you bought outright are evil.
Latenote, "Sunday 12th August 2023" (but really Monday)
This week a classic "I don't have to work" project: sorting out my music library.
My music collection has been all over the place for a while. I have been using iTunes Match since it came out about ten years ago. It's a good service, allowing you to match any DRM-free audio file with the iTunes catalogue and download it to any other iTunes-equipped device, still DRM-free. I've also bought a lot of (DRM-free) music from iTunes over the years.
All of this adds up to about 35 days of music, but it's all been in Apple's cloud storage -- until now. I downloaded the lot, and it's on both a drive attached to the Mac mini (which acts as a server) and on my ThinkPad. That's about 127Gb of music, or 13,552 tracks. Crikey.
I also downloaded the music I have in Amazon's cloud. In 2013 Amazon came up with a terrific idea: if you bought a CD, you got DRM-free MP3s with it for nothing. The service was called AutoRip and amazingly it's still around – although it's not available on every album. If you have the physical space, buying music on CD is usually better than just purchasing the digital file (I think musicians tend to get paid more, and you get a physical backup).
The three things which most caught my attention
- Over in Russia, Putin has signed off on measures designed to limit access to information he doesn't like, including making it illegal to tell people how to use a VPN. Don't think this is only happening in Russia – I'm sure that our current government would love to do the same, probably in the name of "protecting children". You only have to look at the Online Safety Bill to see that.
- Jane Friedman found a bunch of AI-written books published under her name on Amazon and of course Amazon doesn't do a thing about it. Why should Amazon care? They get paid either way. The company has long gone through the enshittification window.
- Local-first software is a bit of a backlash against the complete control which cloud services deliver to corporates and I am totally here for it.
Things I have been writing
On Cnet Deleting its Archive: There's been a controversy over Cnet doing what it calls "content pruning" for SEO purposes. I've done a lot of SEO work on publisher sites, and I think the controversy is overblown. In fact the guidance they give about when and why to do it is exemplary, as are the safeguards they take to ensure it stays available on the Internet Archive.
Things I have been reading
I had a quick canter through M John Harrison's The Centauri Device which is a book I must have read a dozen times, but which I always love. It warped my head a bit when I was 10 and first read it (it was the only SF paperback in the English newsagents when I went on holiday to Spain) and, once you read it, explains a lot about me.
The Centauri Device
Finished reading: The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison 📚
I first read this when I was about ten years old and I’ve loved Harrison’s work ever since. It showed me that SF could be something different, that spaceships didn’t have to mean macho hero figures. MJH doesn’t like it, but I do.
On Cnet deleting its archive
CNet Deletes Thousands of Old Articles in an Attempt to Game Google Search – Pixel Envy:
Google says this whole strategy is bullshit. A bunch of SEO types Germain interviewed swear by it, but they believe in a lot of really bizarre stuff. It sounds like nonsense to me. After all, Google also prioritizes authority, and a well-known website which has chronicled the history of an industry for decades is pretty damn impressive. Why would “a 1996 article about available AOL service tiers” — per the internal memo — cause a negative effect on the site’s rankings, anyhow? I cannot think of a good reason why a news site purging its archives makes any sense whatsoever.There’s been quite a kerfuffle about this. This is an area where I have more than a little experience, and although it sounds counter-intuitive it is completely true that there are instances where it's better for users and the site for old content to be removed.
Although, as Nick points out, Google advises that simply deleting content does nothing for you there are three circumstances where deleting content very definitely does improve your SEO. But you don’t just delete it. Deleting content without redirecting it or in an unstructured manner just leaves you with a bunch of 404s, which you don’t want. It will also almost certainly break some of the crawl paths which Google and other robots use to find their ways around the site.
But there are circumstances where you want to delete and redirect content, either because it’s a bunch of content which is actively harming your site’s authority with Google or because it no longer best serves the needs of your audience.
The first is where that content is thin. Thin content is typical old-style news in brief pieces which are very short. Google has always disliked short content (the rule of thumb is under 300 words) and while a few pieces are fine if a sizeable percentage of your content is thin it can hurt you. Those kind of stories tend to date from the early/mid 00’s, when blasting out tonnes of content was the fashion, and a lot of new-in-brief pieces got written.
The second is when you have lots of repetitive or duplicate content – content which essentially says the same thing, over and over and over again. Big news sites do this a lot, because often with news you have covered the same story with more or less the same facts for a long time. But you will often also have content which is essentially the same, because people have the same idea for an article and don’t bother to check if it already exists – leading to two very similar articles.
Why does that matter? Because Google likes it when there’s one article on your site which provides a clear answer to a specific search query. If you have written two articles on, say, the history of the Mac Plus then it doesn’t know which one to rank and so basically down-ranks both.
The third circumstance is where you have old content receiving no traffic but which is about a keyword you are targeting. Every page has authority on some topics, even if it doesn’t rank well or at all. Often, old content isn’t maintained well. Google likes content which is updated with fresh information, because that content tends to best-serve users arriving from search. If you don’t update content, it tends to gradually lose ranking over time.
Sometimes the best approach with content like this is to start fresh – particularly when you have multiple articles on the same topic. In that case, deleting the old piece and redirecting it to a new URL is the right approach. You get the minimal authority of the old page, sending a clear signal to Google that the new page is the right one for any search queries you previously ranked for.
The Cnet memo on its process is actually a model for how you should do it, with clear guidance and opt-outs for content which is of historical value. Most content isn’t – remember the old adage that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish-and-chip paper – but some stories clearly are. They also ensure that anything deleted is in the Internet Archive (which is another reason why the clear attempts of some publishers to kill it are so stupid).
As a writer, all this can be hard to take – after all you want to see all your articles available – but there are things you can do about it. First, make sure that you keep copies of your work. If you work for a site with an SEO team, talk to them about republishing it on your own personal blog (you can add a canonical to your post to show where the original version was published, and this is actually good for their SEO). And use Authory to keep an archive of everything across every site you publish on.
Downloading all of the music I have bought from iTunes and I am left with some deeply disturbing questions. Such as “when did I buy ‘the best of the Wurzels’”?
Am I the only Mac user who really doesn’t like Magsafe? It constantly gets small particles of grit in it, which stop it making a proper connection, and it’s too easy to knock out. Why not just give me another sodding USB-C port (which is what it basically is)?
Suspect charged in hate-motivated stabbing in Canada university gender issues class
A suspect has been charged in the stabbing of a professor and two students during a class on gender issues at Canada’s University of Waterloo in what police are calling a hate-motivated attack... “The accused targeted a gender studies class and investigators believe this was a hate-motivated incident related to gender expression and gender identity,” Waterloo police said in a statement on Wednesday.
I'm shocked, shocked i tell you, that the stabbing of a professor teaching a class on gender has turned out to be a hate crime. Silence, of course, from the likes of Kathleen Stock and the other specialists in complaining about how they're being “oppressed" for their so-called gender critical views. And silence from the right wing “academic freedom” brigade.
Opinionated record shops
w/e 2023-08-06 (Phil Gyford’s website):
My only specific memory of shopping in Revolver was going in to buy a ticket to see The Wedding Present play at The Studio in 1991. I asked the guy behind the counter for one and, as he reached for the book or box or whatever, in which they kept tickets, he said with a look of distaste, “Well, I suppose Buffalo Tom are supporting.” It was that kind of place.
There is no better thing on this earth than a record shop (or book store) with an opinion about what’s good.
Weeknote, Sunday 6th August 2023
I bought a watch. A normal, not-in-any-way-smart watch, for less than £30. That feels like better value than a smart watch which I use mainly to tell me what the time is and for an occasional timer. Its all part of a vague plot I have to downsize my presence on big platforms, something that I'm sure I will write more about in the not too distance future.
On Wednesday we had an afternoon trip to the cinema -- another benefit of not working -- and saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was much better than I was expecting. It may even be my second-favourite Indiana Jones movie (I have them ranked, don't you?) after, of course, Last Crusade. De-ageing effects have now got so good that after a couple of minutes I forgot all about it, and of course Phoebe Waller-Bridge was great.
I have timed this whole "not working" malarkey quite well: we have the Women's World Cup this month, and the rugby world cup next. If I find myself an job and start a the end of September, I will have timed everything perfectly. Which is a long-winded way of saying that this week has involved a lot of watching the world cup.
On the "I've left my job so I need a treat" list was a new pair of headphones. While the Apple AirPods Pro Max Whatever are great, they don't exactly work well with anything that's not Apple, so got a pair of Fairphone Fairbuds XL, which not only work with anything via Bluetooth, they will also work as wired phones (with no battery left) using USB-C. So far I'm very happy with them.
We are dog sitting, which means we have a pair of Bedlington terriers lazy around the house with it. They haven't yet worked out that they're not getting snacks any time I go in the kitchen, which means a lot of being followed around. They do, though, know that they need to run up and beg at the patio windows to be let out, and that barking at me will probably mean a walk, sooner or later.
I have also been sneezing like a bastard this week, which feels odd as it's very definitely not been the kind of weather which encourages hay-fever -- with this level of damp, there should be nothing in the air which is likely to irritate my nose. I wonder if I'm just not spending enough time out of doors at the moment.
And Foundation series two is out on Apple TV+. I wasn't that impressed with the first series which had some interesting ideas but was a little bit too ponderous. This series, though, is much better with a slew of new characters who are actually interesting, along with better use of all the main ones. I watched the first four episodes in a row, which is rare for me.
Also watched: Spontaneous, which was a really charming movie on Film4 the other night. Charming in only the way that a film about teenagers randomly exploding at a high school can be. Definitely recommended.
The three things which most caught my attention
- I know I link to Cory's work a lot but he keeps writing real humdingers and so I will keep linking to them. This week we got a post on the cloud and its pernicious influence. And he's right: cloud-first is a return to the old mainframe timeshare model of computing where you rent software on other people's computers.
- Trolls and grifters on Twitter are getting desperate, because the only people who get reach now on Twitter are other trolls and grifters. And as the sane, non-conspiracy world moves on from the world's worst social media platform, they're going to more extremes to get attention.
- Grace Lavery's review of books by Julie Bindell, Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce should be required reading for anyone who is interested in the way that the right is using the issue of trans rights to subvert feminism.
Things I have been writing
I finished a short story about a doctor who has lived for 2000 years and grown to not like people very much (and no, it's not a sodding Doctor Who story). Not totally happy with the ending though, so I might need to revisit it.
Things I have been reading
I haven't been doing enough reading. I'm plodding along with China Mieville's A Specter, Haunting but I'm finding it hard going as China is in full-on academic mode and it really needs to be just a little bit more playful. I might do that rarest thing and abandon it.
It's not like I haven't got plenty of other stuff to read. This week to the ever-growing book pile I added Claire Keegan's Antarctica and Margaret Atwood's Wilderness Tips, two collections of short stories which I'm going to get into next.
Billionaire investor threatens to pull out of UK amid global outcry at new oil rush
Billionaire investor threatens to pull out of UK amid global outcry at new oil rush:
“I am a major investor here,” Forrest told Bloomberg News. “If I see this country steering itself over a cliff backing fossil fuel, I am going to start pulling out. I will push my investments over to North America … I must invest where I know I have proper leadership, not leadership which is on a clickbait cycle.”
It’s almost like the Tories still don’t understand that people who aren’t British can read the same newspapers they are pandering to.
Gnome windowing becoming more like Apple's Stage Manager?
The Gnome foundation, which makes arguably the most popular desktop environment for Linux, is experimenting with new windowing models. While there’s development work going into better tiling, the more interesting mode is what they’re calling “Mosaic” – and to my eyes, it looks quite a bit like Apple’s Stage Manager.
Here’s how they describe how it works:
You open a window, it opens centered on the screen at a size that makes the most sense for the app. For a web browser that might be maximized, for a weather app maybe only 700×500 pixels. As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace. If the window layout comes close to filling the screen, the windows are automatically tiled.
That’s a pretty good description of how Stage Manager works too, although the details are different. By default when you open a new application in Stage Manager, it opens in its own “workspace”, with other windows sliding into the shelf on the side. Drag another window in and Stage Manager tries to move windows about so they overlap in the smallest possible way. The Gnome approach looks to be more aggressive about tiling and avoiding overlaps, and although the underlying grid which Stage Manager uses is more relaxed in iPadOS 17 it still feels more “gridded” than Mosaic.
It will be really interesting to see where Gnome goes with this – and what the reaction to it will be. Some parts of the Linux community are heavily committed to tiling and see overlapping windows as basically an error in the history of operating systems, while others are more relaxed and open to new ideas.