Sadly, this was a thing even before the web, let alone social media. There’s always been people for whom the vacations didn’t even “happen” unless they get to go on incessantly about them when they come back, ideally subjecting you to two hours of photos that mean very little to you. They derive little enjoyment from actually being there, they take it from showing it others…
For some people life is not worth living without external validation. Sad.
How about, instead of spending millions on marketing and exercises or graphical virtuosity that do nothing in terms of playability, innovation and fun, focusing on what matters and do games where $70 still turns a huge profit?
At this stage, apart from my medication, I worry the most about my devices and chargers. Everything else, from toiletries to clothes I can buy if it turns out I forgot it and really need it. That lowered my stress with packing significantly (and I am not forgetting more things because of it).
Alan Dix’s book (aptly named “Human Computer Interaction”) is quite good, even if somewhat old by now. HCI is an actual academic discipline with, yes, tons of theoretical and empirical results that govern what a good UI should be. Many of which are indeed grounded in psychology, others in physiology, etc (what we call Human Factors). There is a whole special interest group of the ACM just about it: SIGCHI.
Do not confuse this with fashion/trends/taste. These change, resulting in widely different possible flavors of UI over the years. But the underlying principles are the same.
Another thing to remember is that the fact that Apple, Google, or someone else implemented an UI in a certain way doesn’t mean they are following best practices and guidelines. Novelty sells, even if at the end of the day it does a worse job of things…
Edit: added link to SIGCHI
This is actually a thing. When learning calligraphy, it was one of the exercises we did. If you have good enough control of your hand and pen, then all strokes should be the same length, slanted the same way, and separated by the same spacing. When you manage this apparent “unreadable” thing, it means you nailed it!
The example below comes from this site (not mine)
Neat! I’ve always been a fan of roguelikes!
#Rogule 2024-3-25 🧝 4xp ⛩ 93 👣 streak: 1 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ ⚔ 🐺🐗🧛 🌰🌰 🍄
That makes total sense. Still, it removes the pressure of choosing a server, since migration and use of several servers becomes seamless. As it is right now, there’s the resilience and future lifespan of an instance to consider, plus fragmentation of your identify as defined not by your username but by your actual “online persona” constructed from your posts, etc. (unless you’re really going for alts, of course). You can create other identities on other instances but they are separate, you “lose” your posts, etc. if something happens. if I understood correctly, that becomes less of an issue with nomadic identity?
IMO, this seems exactly what the fediverse needs to thrive. The whole “choose a server” thing is a big disincentive to adoption by most people.
While I’m not entirely sure wat it actually means, the message you get on that site right now might be the reason (some kind of experiment gone wrong artificially inflating the numbers):
I was creating an implementation for the activity pub instance service transfer, but it seems to have spread far. We are very sorry to those who have experienced inconvenience.
All temporarily used data has been removed and all data has been removed. The figures in the data will soon converge to zero.
I trawled unintentionally.
99% Invisible - An excellent design/architecture podcast
20k Hz (“twenty thousand hertz”) - great show about the audio that pervades our daily lives, from notification sounds to movie special effects, passing through game sounds, sound history,etc.
Imaginary Worlds - in their own words, “ a podcast about science fiction, fantasy and other genres of speculative fiction”.
All three are done by professionals in their respective fields, exceedingly well researched, and with superb production values.
This. Inform was the language/platform developed back in the day to author/interpret Z-code, the basis for Infocom’s text adventures. It went beyond just that in more recent versions, but it is designed from the ground up for text adventure creation.
I reluctantly started reading ebooks years ago for a very practical reason: owning some few thousand physical books, I pretty much ran out of room in the shelves in my small apartment. So nowadays I only buy physical art books and the like. Having said this, I actually easily grew to like ebooks, for their ubiquitous availability and, of course, not taking up precious shelf space.
Have to read them in an ereader for a proper experience, though. Tablet/smartphone displays tire my eyes a lot if I read for any meaningful period of time.
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
So much this!
I see myself a bit in all those stages, but i don’t think i ever really ever (temporarily) outgrew “childish” things. Always liked cartoons, always read comics, always played games, and always told those that chided me for not growing up to fuck off. Now entering my 50s, the biggest difference is that people don’t have the courage to bother me about it anymore (and in the rare occasions when they do they don’t argue back after being told off :P )
One more, then!
Indeed. Apple does give you control over notifications, in their different forms, so just turn them off.
Having said this I have the app installed since forever and notifications turned on (useful for order status, shipping notifications etc) and never got a self-promoting notification like that. I wonder if it is a regional thing (I’m in Europe).
You, you can add that list. Motherfuckers will let you type a password as long as you wish, only to internally truncate it. Was driving me crazy until I tried to log in on the mobile app, where it does prevent you to type more characters…
Your body, as a warm-blooded animal, tries to keep a constant temperature (around 98°F or 37°C). Thing is, the body is constantly producing more heat (your metabolism at work…) and needs to get rid of the excess. If the air around you is at the same temperature as you are, it is very hard for heat exchange to take place (for you to get cooler as the air gets hotter) and, thus, you overheat a bit and feel warm.
This is why wind makes you feel cooler: it moves the heated air away from your body and brings in new, cooler air, making the exchange more efficient. Evaporation takes heat away as well, hence we sweat to col ourselves down.
That’s fine: I wasn’t young back then either 😛
OTOH, if you build a playlist manager for playlists everyone can add to, you make sure nothing anyone adds will break it…