The Ink-Pot and the Palette

One of my most-used Chrome browser extensions is Clearly. You install it and it puts a little button at the top of your browser window.

Then, when you come across a page like this:
,

you click this little reading lamp:


and you instantly get this:


I like it better than ad blockers because a) sometimes I do want to see ads, but get them out of the way for serious reading, b) as far as I know, the web page still gets an ad-hit for my click, and c) Clearly, besides removing extraneous crap from the page, renders the main content in a font size and line width I can specify for my own reading ease.

ETA: Oh, and a page rendered in Clearly usually doesn't display comments--believe me, a huge boon when reading anything about bicycling in any local press anywhere.

I've been in a bit of a blog-crisis for the last several months. Is this happening for others?

I'm getting my fandom fix mostly from Tumblr and Twitter; most of my clothes-and-style stuff ends up on Pinterest; and my little everyday illustrated posts start on my phone and end up automagically on Google+.

What's more, it's incredibly easy to share links on those platforms. They're more mobile-friendly. They're more there when I'm out and about.

As a consequence, some of the emotional needs I've fulfilled for years here on LJ/DW are being spread out over several platforms.

But! But...

But I just don't feel a sense of community in those places. Tumblr is a read-only experience for me (and when I say "read only" I mean "look at the pretty pictures of Tyler Hoechlin," mostly) where the local population seems to have an average age of about 18. I'm frankly terrified to post. It's insane.

Google Plus is gorgeous. It has every level of privacy control you could want. It has Hangouts. It has Ripples. It has all the power of Google behind it. But so far, I haven't managed to make it feel like a community. And I can't find that it's fannish at all. (If you know differently, tell me.)

So I'm neither here nor there, and it's causing me to have no consistent online presence at all.

All of which is a long way of saying that I'm still around, and sorry for not being around here more, and a bit bewildered.

"So if these ass-fucks in DC decide to ruin the internet, here’s how to access your favorite sites in the event of a DNS takedown."

Spread the word. (And Dreamwidth is on there! \o/)

I think I've finally been won over to the Kindle side.

Not that I have anything against ebooks--I really don't. I bought a Rocket eBook when it first came out, in 1999, and I've been an avid ebook aficionado ever since--in theory.

But somewhere along the line I kind of quit reading. "Real" reading gave way to fanfic--which I avidly read on my PDA, then on a succession of smartphones--but I gradually seemed to lose all power of attention, and switched almost entirely to podfic and audiobooks. I liked the Kindle in principle, but I didn't really need one.

ravurian (who has been the instigator of a number of changes lately*) recommended Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London, and located an audiobook version for me. I enjoyed it so much that I listened to it twice, the second time finishing this afternoon while I was ironing on my porch in the sun. I wanted to go immediately on to the sequel, but it doesn't seem to be available yet in audio.

So, with my new Android tablet in hand, and a Kindle-for-Android app before me, this evening over dinner I bought my first Kindle edition: Ben Aaronovitch's Moon Over Soho.

I'm in love. I can see it. I can read it. I'm reading again! It's wonderful.

* He also persuaded me to buy a hardcover novel not long ago--and I read it, but it took two months: Jo Walton's Among Others. Good book.

I discovered this function on my new Android phone last night. Well, okay, my 14 year old nephew showed it to me:

You push a button and say, "Navigate to 1234 Southwest 5th Avenue."

And it tells you how to get there.

I know, I know: people who've had iPhones for years, or who have GPS in their car, are no longer impressed by this. And people who actually have a sense of direction could never, ever be as thrilled about it as I am.

But I have no sense of direction. It's a borderline handicap, a slight but very real disability, that carries all kinds of baggage: it's funny to people, it's goofy, it's "feminine," it's an allowable form of "stupidity" for an otherwise very bright, creative person. It's also annoying and incomprehensible to people who don't suffer from it. They think I'm just not trying. "Come on!" they'll say. "Just picture the route in your head!"

There's no picture there. On a good day, if I know that that's west over there (because the sun is setting or I can see the West Hills, or the Pacific Ocean or something obvious), then I can painstakingly work out that to the right of west is north, and to the right of that is east, and to the right of that is south, using the "Never Eat Shredded Wheat" trick. But I can't feel it, and even if I can see it, I'm unsure.

As a prosthetic aid, I have whole catalogs of street names and their sequence memorized from long residence in my hometown. Jefferson Street is south of Madison Street, so if I set out from Madison and come to Jefferson, I can deduce that I'm heading south. If I come to Salmon, on the other hand, I know I've gone north. I cannot sense directions. When I'm moving, I'm just heading forward. When I turn left, I'm still heading forward. That's all I've got.

I've burned a lot of calories and a lot of gasoline over the years correcting for this handicap.

So when I got in my car this morning and said to my phone, "Navigate to [XYZ Address in unfamiliar neighborhood]" and my phone talked to me, right in my ear, and said, "Head west on NE Beech Street and turn right on NE 11th Avenue," and kept telling me exactly when and where to turn--well, I'm not exaggerating when I say I felt like I'd been let out of a prison.

And when I got to where I was going and there was a Google Street View of the destination house right there on my phone screen looking exactly like reality, I wish I could describe the sense of safety and security it gave me.

When I think that I ever, ever ventured out without this tool, I am amazed at myself.

This video of a home-made ascent into the stratosphere to video the blackness of space is the coolest thing I've seen all day. Maybe the coolest thing I've seen in a year.

And that is on an internet full of cool things. Check it out. It's a wonder.

Can anyone explain the pingback thing--and the Twitter and Facebook crosspost-y thing--on LJ in Captain Dummytalk?

Dear Self:

Next time you're tempted by the ranty goodness, remember ( a few simple guidelines )

If you still use Facebook, I think you owe it to yourself to see this amazing graph of the devolution of privacy on that service over the last five years. It's a shocking thing.

If you don't use Facebook and are just interested in the graphical presentation of information, you might want to have a look at it too. It's a gorgeous thing.

ETA: How To Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account

More ETA: Thanks to shezan for How To Opt Out of Facebook's Instant Personalization, where there are step-by-step instructions for turning off the invasive features, handy if deleting your FB account isn't the move for you.

A wonderful thing just happened.

It started with a terrible thing. Late last night, Tom Daley, a guy about to open his shoestring bike-repair business in Southeast Portland, had his location broken into and most of his tools and inventory stolen.

( A tale of social networking and social conscience. )

Small steps, small steps. Thank you nwhepcat for making me aware, so I could pass it on. And good luck to Tom Daley, who is just trying to open a microbusiness in hard times.