The Thrill of Being at the Mercy of a City

This was an interesting one. I expected to read about a woman's harrowing experiences in the streets of an unforgiving city, working for dimes under a soulless corporation and to that effect I was spot on. What I didn't expect is the spirit she carried while doing so. The experience seemed invigorating both for her health and mind. Perhaps, beneath the crushing constraints of such dangerous and, at times, menial work is the spark of a worthy challenge. It seems that her love of the city and the burden it placed upon her gave her something these words don't fully portray.

Overcoming Procrastination

Productivity doesn't come naturally to me. In part because I'm subhuman, but also because work was never something I deliberately practiced coming up. Sloth is/was my vice of choice. Lately, however, I've been practicing meditation and trying to regulate my breathing in an attempt to get my act together. This—well produced—video confirms that it will be no easy road... thankfully, positivity and rising to the challenge are also on my How to be a Human™ checklist.

If only I make it that far.

(H/T Tools & Toys)

Skateboarding will be Featured in the 2020 Olympics

I suppose it only made sense having sports like skateboarding and surfing in the Olympics after having snowboarding enter the fold years ago. I just couldn't have conceived of this happening when I was a kid. I wonder how different the dream is today for kids now that skateboarding is not just counter-culture.

LATENYC by Ta-ku

My current go to album for walking around. It's tough to find an album that's motivating, not too baseline heavy and generally lyric-free. This one from Ta-ku's 2011 collection is a winner.

July 29, 2016

Robots Everywhere

My father is a reserved man. Stoic. Silent. When he does speak it always catches me by surprise, especially when he speaks with out prompting.

Now, he is no philosopher and most of the words he speaks form a complaint, so you shouldn't believe his words carry any more weight than a normal human. That said, because of the infrequency of his verbal contributions, I have always paid close attention to how he says what he says.

Intonation and tone can tell you a great deal about a person's character, dialect about where they're from, diction and word choice can reveal the depths of their education or the breadth of their reading and so on and so on. I'm not sure my father felt his education was a high priority but he's no dummy either. Take that for what you will.

Anyway, one unremarkable (Canadian) Thanksgiving he did something that still sits with me today. The family was buzzing around the kitchen, stirring, preparing and shooting the breeze, while my father and I sat Jin the room adjacent from all the noise. That's when it happened. All 6'7" of his hulking mixed-white dude frame stood to attention, his arm raised and his thick index finger pointed across the room as he said, “What's wrong with the robit?” He was pointing at a TV or Stereo or whatever—doesn't matter really—that was on the fritz.

So many questions began to flood my walnut-sized brain. How did this event get him to both move and speak? Has he ever used the word 'robit' since I've been alive? Did he learn the word 'robot' in the fifties and hasn't used it since? (Clearly, the dialect suggests so.) Is the concept of a robot even clear to him? Does he refer to everything electronic as a 'robit'? Does he speak like this all the time in his head, without ever voicing the words?

In our household, you never asked questions. We were far too pragmatic for "what ifs" I suppose, perhaps that's just what I told myself. So, like a good son, I once again towed the family line and poured an icy glass of repression on the fire in my mind. Swallowed down, all the way to those faded childhood memories of mine.

Until today.

To this day I smile when I hear the word 'robot'. In my head, I swap what I hear and remember that curious moment from my past. I grin when I hear a random beep of a cell phone[1]—your robot's beeping—or watch someone point an unflinching remote control at a television screen, their face twisted in frustration—Damn those ungrateful robots! Never do as they're told.

I get strange looks at the market, when I ask if the robot accepts Apple Pay and furrowed brows abound any time I forget to wind my watch: I am left with no choice but to reply, "Sorry mate, my robot's called in sick today."

I don't know much about you dad, it's a bit of shame really. It's clear that at this stage in my life I'll never ask, but you've taught me to relish the simple pleasure of never explaining a joke.

Thanks, dad.[2]

  1. Clearly owned by someone from a generation earlier than mine, because all millennials—I had to look it up but yes, that's me—keep their phones on silent at all times. And I speak for all of my entitled and disaffected generation, wink-wink and/or nudge-nudge. ↩︎

  2. I'll break the rule just this once. Adding "thanks, dad" after a reasonably dark and heated diatribe is, perhaps, my favourite way to break the ice at parties. ↩︎

Whither Masculinity? White Shoes to the Rescue

From the clever manly-men at Esquire:

Not everyone knows this, but the misunderstood white trainer is a style weapon.

(Emphasis my own.)

Old article, sure, but I'm just happy knowing that I'm not alone in recognising feet as the burly action heroes of the body.

July 27, 2016

Well That Escalated Quickly

I'm a watch human. A penniless watch human, but interested in horology none-the-less. Often you can find me goofing around, surfing watch blogs and forums, perusing for small time robots to wear on my feeble wrists. So you will have little trouble imagining how excited I was to see this sweet little number from Seiko's incredible Grand Seiko limited edition series.

At least, that's where I started.

Before I know it, I'm watching insane videos, one, after the other (did I mention these are insane?) about the Onbashira, which the watch is meant to commemorate.

From Nagano Prefecture's Tourism Guide:

Once every seven years, the Suwa area (in central Nagano) holds the Onbashira festival. In this festival, thousands of locals participate in moving 16 massive fir tree trunks from the surrounding mountains to the shrines of Suwa. These fir trees are usually 17 to 19 meters long, 1 meter wide and weigh around 7.5 tons each. These trees become the new great pillars, or Onbashira, in the corners of each Suwa shrine.d

They must cross rivers, navigate narrow Japanese streets and even ride these massive trees downhill. It’s an amazing spectacle and it will be happening in April and May of next year, so now’s the time to start planning!

Now... I am internet-outraged that I missed this festival in 2016. The only consolation for missing this little gem is the warm glow of Japanagos video tour of the event.

The Internet: come for the dream, stay for the bravado.

July 22, 2016

Listener Fatigue

<first world problem>

I love listening to podcasts, nearing the level I enjoy reading books. Reading for prolonged periods of time makes me sleepy. Listening to podcasts for extended lengths makes me lethargic. I am a border-line adult, so I need to get at least something done—anything really.

<symphony of violins="tiny" />

My personal solution: only listen to podcasts while walking, with allotments for the occasional PokéStop.

</end vapid issue>

July 03, 2016

Backend Updates

A riveting subject: after 5 years of talking about it, I can finally post to this site using any device and a private GIT repository. I'm not setting the world on fire, but I felt like a pat on the back was in order.

Strike one overdue project off the list.

We Are Finally Ready for Pootie Tang Just 15 Years Later

[2001's] comedic hits were Zoolander, Not Another Teen Movie, and Legally Blonde—although categorically similar in being over-the-top, these comedies were a lot safer than Pootie Tang. It’s easy and trite to make fun of hot people and teens; it’s easy to complicate and build on these tropes because everyone knows them. But satirizing black pop culture for a mainstream white audience? Mixed results.

America wasn’t ready—but we are now. We (thankfully) live in the woke-or-bust era, when complicating identity politics rules supreme, and if you’re not down, you’re out. Pootie Tang, who has his own incomprehensible yet inherently cool language, would be an especially poignant hero in the context of internet virality and the proliferation of black vernacular into mainstream slang.

I love this film. Perhaps I was embarrassed to admit it all those years ago, but there was something about a film full of cultural tropes and absolutely silly punchlines that spoke to me. I grew up against—I use the word very lightly—a homogenous ethnic background and frankly, I stuck out. Seeing different faces in film was cool, but seeing those same faces have fun and enjoy themselves was all I could possibly have asked for as a teenager.

Now, I'm off to find a copy.

I Want to be a Romantic Fool

In an interview for First We Feast Anthony Bourdain, reminiscing about his journey thus far, dropped this line:

In order to write well about food you need to eat well, and you cannot eat well if you’re analyzing the food. … I want to be lost in the meal. I want to be a romantic fool.

(Emphasis is my own.)

As I get older, more of my feeble personality is arguing to get lost-in-things more often. Romanticism has a truly inspiring and uplifting quality that perhaps isn't in vogue these days. Finding small moments or pleasures to invest yourself into is a worthwhile pursuit.

I mean, why shouldn't the sun rise just for me?

June 26, 2016

Mobile Mobile Web Development

In a former life, I designed and developed websites for money. When I tried to craft a site for a side project again recently, I ran into a thorny issue: I don't own a "desktop computer," only mobile devices. Eventually, I figured it out, as you might imagine given my headline, replacing a beige box with a tablet/phone is not impossible.

Luckily, a lot has changed in the web design space since I hung up my boots as a web-person-thing. Current design thinking is systematic and newer trends focus on content first, modular design methodologies and native design tools (i.e., in the browser). No more Photoshop—well there is room for graphic design programs, but no PSD == website-waiting-to-be-sliced thinking. Good news is that with the right attitude any modern mobile device can handle these tasks with aplomb.

I'll admit that I struggled. It was not terribly clear how to design for the web using these tools, but that's probably a decade of bad habits talking. I suspect if you follow my lead, you will encounter a similar shrill cry from your lizard brain trying to convince you out of learning a new way to work. Humans, amirite?

I'm going to shy away from directly discussing tools because you likely have your own workflows. Honestly, you will undoubtably find something that works better for you. What I will spend more time talking about is some of the new ways of thinking that are required to make this less weird.

Wherefore art thou localhost?

First hill to climb: none of your code is going to run locally, unless you're working in basic HTML and CSS (through something like Panic's excellent Coda for iOS). Chances are, if you've done this before, you have developed websites on a local server instance,[1] but on mobile you have no access to the lower orders of your operating system. Great for safety, not so great for lazy geeks, like Mr. Eye over here.

The answer is simple: find yourself a server to do your development. Now, before you get all gushy on me, you have choices: pay for a VPS[2], find an old PC and setup a LAMP or LEMP stack, or try a cloud provider like EC2. There are loads of guides all over the Internet, but setting any of those options up is beyond the scope of this article.[3]

Do all of your development on a private server, that's it. A bit of a pain compared to what you're used to, but that feeling of pain is actually what we're fighting here, so no biggie.

What? I can't see everything?

With my remote development environment setup, I began my work. I had my text editor open and started tapping away, when I found another road block. I was like, "Oh, snap. I'm blind!" because I couldn't have a browser open while I was typing into my text editor. I'll admit, this bit felt like a real show stopper.

I wanted my external 27" monitor so I could futz about with window management and get things just right, but the old way just isn't possible on a mobile device.[4] Multitasking on tablets can help you accomplish this exact thing, however, the feeling struck something deeply rooted. Every habit I had established seemed to be boiling inside me, yet I pushed on.

On my iPad Pro, I had a terminal open to my server on two-thirds of my screen and a phone width browser to fill the rest. Modern design recommends designing from the least capable device up, so I re-learned to design from the bottom-ish up.[5] This is ultimately a strength of the platform. Designers often start on incredibly powerful machines with gorgeous displays and massive bandwidth, despite most of their users will have likely have none of those. Starting from an experience your users will likely have makes it easier to empathise and make better design decisions... Not that this project will likely have any critical mass.

The benefit of having a remote development server is that you can have multiple devices looking at the same page without any fuss. I'll admit it's funny developing with a tablet, phone and whatever other browser enabled device you have on hand but it does expand the mind a bit towards the realities of the Internet.

Take Away

What's applicable here, is that this type of design takes an entirely different thought process. Draw everything on sticky notes, scraps of paper; take pictures; get out the pens and have a conversation with stakeholders; arrange them in a spreadsheet or PowerPoint file; then get it into the browser and see how it works. New features in CSS and JavaScript make getting straight into code easier to do with less overhead than slicing PNG files.

It's a tough to let go of what you know and I'm still fighting off those entrenched computing habits of mine. As you will have no doubt gleaned, this is the real work involved in making the transition to mobile-only. The tools are there (for the most part, I can't speak to other use cases) but the mindsets are not.

  1. Using something like MAMP, XAMPP, WAMP, or my personal favourite CLAMP on your personal desktop/laptop. ↩︎

  2. If you're looking for something cheap and reliable, try Digital Ocean which is what I use to host this blog. Warning, by clicking that link there is the slight chance my hosting costs get cheaper by a nickel or two (no one has done it yet, so I can't actually be sure how much). If you are worried about that sort of thing, try Linode, or heck, use this link for Digital Ocean. ↩︎

  3. Because I can't resist talking about Ops, I'll give you a hint on where you might start: use easyengine, SSH, tmux, VIM or Emacs and GIT. We love our tools, don't we? ↩︎

  4. I'm well aware of tablets that run desktop operating systems, but I'm focused solely on mobile operating systems. ↩︎

  5. There's a whole discussion to be had about designing for less capable devices, browsers and bandwidth, but alas, the discussion will have to wait, I'm already running long. ↩︎

What is this Place?

This is the weblog of the strangely disembodied TRST. Here it attempts to write somewhat intelligibly on, well, anything really. Overall, it may be less than enticing.

Places of Note