The Art Of Not Asking Why

Heading back home. This wasn’t the magical vacation it was last time, but you can’t make magic, it happens on its own when you don’t have the expectations. Thoughts and (more) pics coming soon.

As a result of a conversation with Pete yesterday, I did some of my own digging into accessibility and contrast.

The first interesting thing I learned: folks with myopia (which is the medical term for shortsightedness), especially those with Astigmatism, are likely to also have halation, which is a “glow” or a “halo” of bright lights. As a person with Myopia and Astigmatism for most of my life, I didn’t know that the third phenomenon has a name. White text on black background increases this halation to the point of making it hard for me to read the text. For years, I thought it was just my own poor eyesight that does that; turns out it’s much more common.

I’ve never liked harsh contrast for this reason. As a matter of fact, a more “gentle” contrasting theme is one of the reasons I like working in Emacs. My website and my wiki are a result of these preferences. The black text on the beige background is comfortable on my eyes. Enough contrast to read, but not enough to burn text into my vision, as many dark modes out there do.

The second interesting thing I learned: Google has a team looking into accessibility, and Chrome has a built-in tool to can check accessibility issues on websites. Here’s an example from my website (my letters-to-background ratio is good enough, as turns out). I’m not sure if Safari and/or Fhaveirefox have these tools.

One of my favorite “bald guy” hacks is the noggin water splash. If it’s hot, go wash your hands, face, and noggin with cold water in that order. Immediate relief. I promise it won’t damage your haircut.

This photo doesn’t do it justice, but I had to capture it as I was walking, with only the phone on me. I hope to get better photos later today or tomorrow.

Question for you weather gurus out there 🌞 ⛈️. When you look at the radar map in a weather app and you see the clouds in all these pretty colors, is this a prediction or is this what already happened? Am I looking at a forecast or what happened earlier with the clouds?

“Yes your dog can come in. Yes we have a restroom. Yes you can use it.”

I don’t think we’re in NYC anymore.

On my way to a short fireworks escape vacation for a couple of days. Took the camera bag with me, and excited to see what photos I take this time.

For the last hour or so, I tried to get VMware working on my Windows desktop. My Linux mint VM, which I had installed and worked perfectly fine for a long while (I’ve used VMs for the last 8 years or so), is unusable. VMware is extremely sluggish, so much so that keyboard input can lock and result in characters duplicating. Watching videos is impossible: the video itself barely moves, and the sound breaks down to sub-levels of slow motion.

Apparently, this is the result of a resent-ish Windows update (what a shock 😤) that changed how virtualization works. Long story short, if I understand this correctly, there is another layer of isolation that VMware needs to work through. VMware uses whatever MS introduced and not the VMware component, and that is what causes the issue.

So far, my attempts at fixing this failed. There are various places showing how to disable this feature (Hyper V), but nothing seems to work. As a matter of fact, I noticed some of the mentioned features were off already, so I tried to turn them on to see if it made a difference. Nothing. My VMs are still unusable.

I do have Linux installed directly on my desktop, but this means no Windows, which I still need for some games I play (World of Warships stopped working on Linux for me for some reason, and Diablo 4 is a no go on Linux for now).

Looking forward to Cities: Skylines 2 🎮 coming this October

Cities: Skyline is a dangerous game if you’re into city building. You can design your cities down to the level of the pavement of the sidewalk, apartment buildings from around the world, and your local coffee shops, all thanks to a thriving modding community.

They’re coming up with a sequel, and they are intimidating us with an even more realistic model. How dare they threaten us with a good time.

Another grey rainy day with some 75% humidity until the afternoon… At times like these I think I was made for deserts.

Pride 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️at the Westfield World Trade Center

Back in 1984, William Gibson wrote Neuromancer, a book that gave birth to the Cyberpunk genre along with Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner. Dungeons and Dragons (D&D, or DnD) was already in the geek scene for ten years at the time. I’m a little surprised that it took Shadowrun, ten more to show up, and still somehow miss the point.

I’ve spent the last week or so reading up Shadowrun rules. I want to bring up the DnD gang back together to explore a new world, one that I’ve been cooking in my head for months. It takes place in the far future. Human cloning failed unexpectedly and spectacularly, giving birth to a certain form of “magic” in the process. I wanted a roleplaying game that brings into play huge corporations, cybernetics, and computer systems, and Shadowrun was an obvious spot to revisit. But I dropped it pretty quickly.

First, we already know and understand DnD 5e. Learning a new system of rules, especially a confusing and complex one like Shadowrun’s, is not appealing. That, and the fact that I don’t think the human hand is meant to roll 12 dice at once (a bad Shadowrun joke).

Second, I don’t like the lore of Shadowrun. Magic is fantastical, Dragons are real, and dwarves and elves show up because of some sort of disease… eck. I already have my own story, as I mentioned above. I wanted the system to adopt my world, not the other way around.

Third, making your own rules is fun. I am not an experienced DnD DM and I will never memorize all those rules. I count on my players not just as guests to my creation, but also equal in its making. We will shape and adjust rules as needed. Taking out the Big Book of Rules and searching if something can be done and how or is not as fun.

So nowadays I’m expanding on my rules and lore where it makes sense: my wiki. It’s mostly DnD rules that will remain unchanged with a couple of twists influenced by Shadowrun and my own inventions. My goal is to get to a “beta” point where we can test it, perhaps during a session 0 of sorts.

My niece graduated from kindergarten, and I wanted to send a reply in a short video. I don’t usually use my iPhone on a whim for personal messaging, but my sister is deep in Apple’s world. Here’s the process:

1. I Recorded a short video using the iPhone’s camera app
2. Realizing I wanted to cut two parts out, I sent it over to the Mac with Airdrop
3. On the Mac, I opened it in Snagit and edited it to my liking
4. I dropped the MP4 into Messages and sent it to my sister

I haven’t done this before, but the process was so intuitive and seamless that it blew my mind. As a person who uses Linux on a daily basis, I forget how nice it is that technology is so seamless these days. 10 years ago, this was all science fiction.

When I read the pro and con arguments about Facebook federating, I feel the same way. Maybe Facebook’s integration with ActivityPub means I could reach my friends from college who never left Facebook and will always stay there. Maybe they’ll see my posts on their feed, and I could communicate with them without ever logging into Facebook Messenger. To me, that’s a win.

Does this mean Facebook’s motives are anything but profit and closed walls? No. This is the same way I think about Apple and Messages. But I like having options.

It’s easy for me to say, “Join Mastodon! Chat with me on Signal! It’s easy!” But to my sister and my college friends, it’s not. And yelling louder would only make me more obnoxious and these alternatives even less appealing.

I now have an official email with my domain…! Hooray. It’s my name here at the domain, also added to the About page.

I’ve been busy with a couple of updates, mostly on the wiki. More on that soon. Time to eat some Indian food, one of my favorite cuisines.

From Wired:

The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens wired.com

Read: www.wired.com

Wired doesn’t do much besides pointing fingers and raising the alarm, but it did lead me to this PDF from the DNI (Director of National Intelligence):

www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf dni.gov

Read: www.dni.gov

Data brokers “maintain large, sophisticated databases with consumer information that can include credit histories, insurance claims, criminal records, employment histories, incomes, ethnicities, purchase histories, and interests,” among other things. They are so effective that even the government prefers to go to them to get whatever their after.

In turn, these data brokers have special rates for local and federal governments to encourage these entities to buy this information.

The fireworks started here in NYC. Since COVID, I hate those with passion. The sleepless nights for these couple of weeks is not something I want to experience again. Glad to take a vacation for the 4th.

“The Cage” on West 4th Street in Manhattan 🏀. I watched an intense game between the Greens and the Reds for a few minutes.