Personal – Page 131

Poly Parents Evening

Our eldest, 4, started school this year and this week saw her first parents’ evening. This provided an opportunity for we, her parents, to “come out” to her teacher about our slightly-unconventional relationship structure. And everything was fine, which is nice.

I’m sure the first few months of every child’s school life are a time that’s interesting and full of change, but it’s been particularly fascinating to see the ways in which our young academic’s language has adapted to fit in with and be understood by her peers.

I first became aware of these changes, I think, when I overheard her describing me to one of her school friends as her “dad”: previously she’d always referred to me as her “Uncle Dan”. I asked her about it afterwards and she explained that I was like a dad, and that her friend didn’t have an “Uncle Dan” so she used words that her friend would know. I’m not sure whether I was prouder about the fact that she’d independently come to think of me as being like a bonus father figure, or the fact that she demonstrated such astute audience management.

I don’t object to being assigned this (on-again, off-again, since then) nickname. My moniker of Uncle Dan came about as a combination of an effort to limit ambiguity (“wait… which dad?”) and an attempt not to tread on the toes of actual-father JTA: the kids themselves are welcome to call me pretty-much whatever they’re comfortable with. Indeed, they’d be carrying on a family tradition if they chose-for-themselves what to call me: Ruth and her brothers Robin and Owen address their father not by a paternal noun but by his first name, Tom, and this kids have followed suit by adopting “Grand-Tom” as their identifier for him.

Knowing that we were unusual, though, we’d taken the time to do some groundwork before our eldest started school. For example we shared a book about and spent a while talking about how families differ from one another: we figure that an understanding that families come in all kinds of shapes and sizes is a useful concept in general from a perspective of diversity and and acceptance. In fact, you can hear how this teaching pays-off in the language she uses to describe other aspects of the differences she sees in her friends and their families, too.

Still, it was a little bit of a surprise to find myself referred to as a “dad” after four years of “Uncle Dan”.

Nonetheless: in light of the fact that she’d clearly been talking about her family at school and might have caused her teacher some confusion, when all three of us “parents” turned up to parents’ evening we opted to introduce ourselves and our relationship. Which was all fine (as you’d hope: as I mentioned the other day, our unusual relationship structure is pretty boring, really), and the only awkwardness was in having to find an additional chair than the teacher had been expecting to use with which to sit at the table.

There’s sometimes a shortage of happy “we did a thing, and it went basically the same as it would for a family with monogamous parents” poly-family stories online, so I thought this one was worth sharing.

And better yet: apparently she’s doing admirably at school. So we all celebrated with an after-school trip to one of our favourite local soft play centres.

While we Blink, we loose [sic] the Web

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

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We used to have much more diversity in terms of browser engines years ago than we do today. This is easy to understand as the Web in 2018 is far more complex than it was in the early noughties. It is very costly to develop and maintain a Web engine and few companies have the necessary talent and cash to do it. Microsoft is one of those companies but the fact that it might be throwing in the towel on its engine signals a bad development for all of us.

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Andre Alves Garzia

Further evaluation of the dangers of the disappearing diversity on the Web, following in the theme of my thoughts the other day about Microsoft’s adoption of Chromium instead of EdgeHTML in its browser.

Andre raises a real point: how will we fight for a private and decentralised Web when it becomes “the Google Web”?

Risking a Homogeneous Web

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I don’t think Microsoft using Chromium is the end of the world, but it is another step down a slippery slope. It’s one more way of bolstering the influence Google currently has on the web.

We need Google to keep pushing the web forward. But it’s critical that we have other voices, with different viewpoints, to maintain some sense of balance. Monocultures don’t benefit anyone.

Tim Kadlec

This essay follows-up nicely on my concerns about Microsoft’s move from EdgeHTML to Chromium in Edge, but goes further to discuss some of the bigger problems of a homogeneous web, especially one under Google’s influence.

Why You Should Never, Ever Use Quora

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Yesterday, Quora announced that 100 million user accounts were compromised, including private activity like downvotes and direct messages, by a “malicious third party.”

Data breaches are a frustrating part of the lifecycle of every online service — as they grow in popularity, they become a bigger and bigger target. Nearly every major online service has had a security breach: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Tumblr, Uber, Evernote, eBay, Adobe, Target, Twitter, and Sony all extensively leaked user data in the last few years.

Security breaches like these are a strong argument for using a password manager, but not a compelling reason to avoid a service you love, unless you plan to quit the internet entirely.

But this does seem like a good time to remind you of all the other reasons why you should never, ever use Quora.

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Andy Baio (Waxy)

Short summary of why you shouldn’t use Quora (even ignoring the recent security scare), for those who can’t be bothered clicking-through:

They claim to want to share knowledge, but they hoard and restrict access to knowledge
They’re actively hostile to the free exchange of data, both technically and politically
They directly oppose the archiving and backup of the knowledge they hoard
They won’t last (even remotely) forever

Just don’t use Quora.

Bodleian Advent Calendar

Hot on the tail of Pong, I wanted to share another mini-project I’ve developed for the Bodleian: this year’s digital advent calendar:

Bodleian 2018 digital advent calendar — If you look closely, you’ll find I’ve shown you a sneak-peek at some of what’s behind tomorrow’s door. Shh. Don’t tell our social media officer.

As each door is opened, a different part of a (distinctly-Bodleian/Oxford) winter scene unfolds, complete with an array of fascinating characters connected to the history, tradition, mythology and literature of the area. It’s pretty cool, and you should give it a go.

If you want to make one of your own – for next year, presumably, unless you’ve an inclination to count-down in this fashion to something else that you’re celebrating 25 days hence – I’ve shared a version of the code that you can adapt for yourself.

Sample advent calendar — The open-source version doesn’t include the beautiful picture that the Bodleian’s does, so you’ll have to supply your own.

Features that make this implementation a good starting point if you want to make your own digital advent calendar include:

Secure: your server’s clock dictates which doors are eligible to be opened, and only content legitimately visible on a given date can be obtained (no path-traversal, URL-guessing, or traffic inspection holes).
Responsive: calendar adapts all the way down to tiny mobiles and all the way up to 4K fullscreen along with optimised images for key resolutions.
Friendly: accepts clicks and touches, uses cookies to remember the current state so you don’t have to re-open doors you opened yesterday (unless you forgot to open one yesterday), “just works”.
Debuggable: a password-protected debug mode makes it easy for you to test, even on a production server, without exposing the secret messages behind each door.
Expandable: lots of scope for the future, e.g. a progressive web app version that you can keep “on you” and which notifies you when a new door’s ready to be opened, was one of the things I’d hoped to add in time for this year but didn’t quite get around to.

I’ve no idea if it’s any use to anybody, but it’s available on GitHub if you want it.

Best mimicry ever

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From Real Monstrosities via Ed Yong via Matthew Cobb comes one of the best cases of mimicry I’ve ever seen. Natural selection has been a fantastic artist here, giving a perfect illusion of three-dimensionality. In fact, this may be the most astonishing case of mimicry I know.

It’s a moth from eastern Asia: Uropyia meticulodina—a fantastic dead-leaf mimic:

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Jerry Coyne (Why Evolution is True)

What I love about this thing is that it looks 3D. Even looking at photos or videos of the beast, your eyes will deceive you: its wings and back are flat, but look like a dried-up and curled-up leaf. Incredible.

Edge may be becoming Chromium-powered, and that’s terrible

Microsoft engineers have been spotted committing code to Chromium, the backend of Google Chrome and many other web browsers. This, among other things, has lead to speculation that Microsoft’s browser, Edge, might be planned to switch from its current rendering engine (EdgeHTML) to Blink (Chromium’s). This is bad news.

This page in Microsoft Edge — This post, as it would appear if you were looking at it in Edge. Which you might be, I suppose.

The younger generation of web developers are likely to hail this as good news: one fewer engine to develop for and test in, they’re all already using Chrome or something similar (and certainly not Edge) for development and debugging anyway, etc. The problem comes perhaps because they’re too young to remember the First Browser War and its aftermath. Let me summarise:

Once upon a time – let’s call it the mid-1990s – there were several web browsers: Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc. They all used different rendering engines and so development was sometimes a bit of a pain, but only if you wanted to use the latest most cutting-edge features: if you were happy with the standard, established features of the Web then your site would work anywhere, as has always been the case.
Then, everybody starting using just one browser: following some shady dealings and monopoly abuse, 90%+ of Web users started using just one web browser, Internet Explorer. By the time anybody took notice, their rivals had been economically crippled beyond any reasonable chance of recovery, but the worst had yet to come…
Developers started targeting only that one browser: instead of making websites, developers started making “Internet Explorer sites” which were only tested in that one browser or, worse yet, only worked at all in that browser, actively undermining the Web’s position as an open platform. As the grip of the monopoly grew tighter, technological innovation was centred around this single platform, leading to decade-long knock-on effects.
The Web ceased to grow new features: from the release of Internet Explorer 6 there were no significant developments in the technology of the Web for many years. The lack of competition pushed us into a period of stagnation. A decade and a half later, we’re only just (finally) finishing shaking off this unpleasant bit of our history.

History looks set to repeat itself. Substitute Chrome in place of Internet Explorer and update the references to other web browsers and the steps above could be our future history, too. Right now, we’re somewhere in or around step #2 – Chrome is the dominant browser – and we’re starting to see the beginnings of step #3: more and more “Chrome only” sites. More-alarmingly this time around, Google’s position in providing many major Web services allows them to “push” even harder for this kind of change, even just subtly: if you make the switch from Chrome to e.g. Firefox (and you absolutely should) you might find that YouTube runs slower for you because YouTube’s (Google) engineers favour Google’s web browser.

Chrome is becoming the new Internet Explorer 6, and that’s a huge problem. Rachel Nabors wrote in her excellent article The Ecological Impact of Browser Diversity:

So these are the three browser engines we have: WebKit/Blink, Gecko, and EdgeHTML. We are unlikely to get any brand new bloodlines in the foreseeable future. This is it.

If we lose one of those browser engines, we lose its lineage, every permutation of that engine that would follow, and the unique takes on the Web it could allow for.

And it’s not likely to be replaced.

Imagine a planet populated only by hummingbirds, dolphins, and horses. Say all the dolphins died out. In the far, far future, hummingbirds or horses could evolve into something that could swim in the ocean like a dolphin. Indeed, ichthyosaurs in the era of dinosaurs looked much like dolphins. But that creature would be very different from a true dolphin: even ichthyosaurs never developed echolocation. We would wait a very long time (possibly forever) for a bloodline to evolve the traits we already have present in other bloodlines today. So, why is it ok to stand by or even encourage the extinction of one of these valuable, unique lineages?

We have already lost one.

We used to have four major rendering engines, but Opera halted development of its own rendering engine Presto before adopting Blink.

Three left. Spend them wisely.

As much as I don’t like having to work-around the quirks in all of the different browsers I test in, daily, it’s way preferable to a return to the dark days of the Web circa most of the first decade of this century. Please help keep browsers diverse: nobody wants to start seeing this shit –

Update: this is now confirmed. A sad day for the Web.

Lunch With My First Love, 20 Years Later

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I twist the band on my left ring finger. I never know what to do with my hands, especially when I’m nervous.

I’m at McDonald’s. I see him at the door before he sees me. I watch him look around the room. My heart is beating so fast it’s making me dizzy. The whole scene freezes.

I am transported back 20 years: surrounded by Gothic architecture on our East Coast college campus. Our backpack straps around both shoulders on a crisp day, our hands in each other’s jacket pockets as we met up briefly between classes — a kiss, a hug, a quick story. We were a brochure for young love. We made it look good; we made it look easy. And it was good and easy, for a very long time.

Now, I see him see me and his face lights up. I know that face by heart. I look away, pretend to dig through my purse. I can feel any and all sense and rationality leaving my body.

How many times have I imagined this meeting in the past decade? How many versions have played through my mind — the angry, the passionate, the blasé version — now that we’ve both moved on, married other people, and had kids?

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Charlotte Flynn (The Cut)

‘Boring and normal’: the new frontier of polyamorous parenting

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by Zosia Bielski

Sometimes Stephanie Weisner doesn’t know how two-parent families do it all, without a Mike in tow.

Weisner, 38, has been in a polyamorous relationship with her husband, Ian Hubbard, and her work colleague, Mike Wissink, for eight years. The three adults all live together in one home in Moncton, alongside Weisner and Hubbard’s two children, who are seven and nine years old.

The family keeps a joint e-mail account to sort out their household logistics. While Weisner and Wissink, 49, work shifts at their airline industry jobs, Hubbard, 47, home-schools the children. Wissink often cooks and cleans while Weisner does the groceries. All three pitch in with bedtimes and shuttling the kids to their various activities. This winter, the whole family’s going to Disney World.

“We’re very boring and normal,” said Weisner. “We’re not swinging from chandeliers.”

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Zosia Bielski (The Globe and Mail)

Sometimes somebody will ask me about my polyamorous relationships and they often have a preconception that Ruth, JTA and I’s lives are incredibly interesting and exciting (usually with the assumption on the side that we’re particularly sexually-adventurous). But like virtually any other decade-plus long relationship and especially with children in tow, we’re really quite ordinary and domestic. That there’s an additional adult around is basically the only thing that stands out, and we’re each individually far more-interesting and diverse than we are by the product of our romantic lifestyle.

This article pleased me somewhat because of the symmetries between us and the family depicted by it, but especially because they too seem to have to spend time reassuring other that they’re just regular folks, beneath it all. There’s a tendency to assume that if somebody’s a little different from you then everything else must be different too, and articles like this help to remind us that we’re all a lot more-alike than we are different. Even we weird polyamorous people.

If Doggerland Had Not Drowned

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by Lee Rimmer

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As well additional land around our familiar coastlines, the lower sea level reveals a low lying 9,000 square mile landmass called Doggerland – named after Dogger Bank, the large sandbank which currently sits in a shallow area of the North Sea off the east coast of England (dogger being an old Dutch word for fishing boat).

Doggerland had a rich landscape of hills, rivers and lakes and a coastline comprising lagoons, marshes and beaches. It had woodlands of oak, elm, birch, willow, alder, hazel and pine. It was home to horses, aurochs, deer, elks and wild pigs. Waterfowl, otters and beavers abounded in wetland areas and the seas, lakes and rivers teemed with fish. It was probably the richest hunting and fishing ground in Europe at the time and had an important influence on the course of prehistory in northwestern Europe as maritime and river-based societies adapted to this environment.

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Lee Rimmer (Abroad in the Yard)

I love a bit of alternative history fiction, and this is a big one, going all the way back to prehistoric times. What if the period of global warming that took place thousands of years ago, “sinking” Doggerland and separating the formerly-connected British Isles from one another and from the European mainland? The potential impact is massive, affecting geography, history, and politics indefinitely, and it’s fun to think – and read – about.

Dan Q found GC1H3PK Keep On Mooving

This checkin to GC1H3PK Keep On Mooving reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Some fellow volunteers and I were staying at nearby Wroxall Abbey following our Christmas party this weekend and I took the opportunity to walk out here between breakfast and check-out to hunt for this cache. Passing GC5RZB4 (and a herd of cows) on the way I was soon able to spot the tell-tale signs of a cache hiding place and soon had the container in my hand.

I love to see a good location with a week maintained cache; nice work CO, and TFTC!

Dan Q found GC5RZB4 #10..CHEWBACCA

This checkin to GC5RZB4 #10..CHEWBACCA reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Staying in nearby Wroxall Abbey for a Christmas party with a nonprofit I volunteer with, I took the opportunity to wander out to find this cache and nearby and GC1H3PK this morning between breakfast and check-out. I was watched suspiciously by herd of cows nearby. TFTC.

Pong

I’ve recently been reimplementing retro arcade classic Pong to show off during a celebration of World Digital Preservation Day 2018 yesterday at the Bodleian Libraries. Here’s how that went down.

The team responsible for digital archiving had plans to spend World Digital Preservation Day running a stand in Blackwell Hall for some time before I got involved. They’d asked my department about using the Heritage Window – the Bodleian’s 15-screen video wall – to show a carousel of slides with relevant content over the course of the day. Or, they added, half-jokingly, “perhaps we could have Pong up there as it’ll be its 46th birthday?”

But I didn’t take it as a joke. I took it as a challenge.

Emulating Pong is pretty easy. Emulating Pong perfectly is pretty hard. Indeed, a lot of the challenge in the preservation of (especially digital) archives in general is in finding the best possible compromise in situations where perfect preservation is not possible. If these 8″ disks are degrading, is is acceptable to copy them onto a different medium? If this video file is unreadable in modern devices, is it acceptable to re-encode it in a contemporary format? These are the kinds of questions that digital preservation specialists have to ask themselves all the damn time.

Emulating Pong in a way that would work on the Heritage Window but be true to the original raised all kinds of complications. (Original) Pong’s aspect ratio doesn’t fit nicely on a 16:9 widescreen, much less on a 27:80 ultrawide. Like most games of its era, the speed is tied to the clock rate of the processor. And of course, it should be controlled using a “dial”.

By the time I realised that there was no way that I could thoroughly replicate the experience of the original game, I decided to take a different track. Instead, I opted to reimplement Pong. A reimplementation could stay true to the idea of Pong but serve as a jumping-off point for discussion about how the experience of playing the game may be superficially “like Pong” but that this still wasn’t an example of digital preservation.

Two participants play Pong on the Heritage Window — Bip… boop… boop… bip… boop… bip…

Here’s the skinny:

A web page, displayed full-screen, contains both a <canvas> (for the game, sized appropriately for a 3 × 3 section of the video wall) and a <div> full of “slides” of static content to carousel alongside (filling a 2 × 3 section).
Javascript writes to the canvas, simulates the movement of the ball and paddles, and accepts input from the JS Gamepad API (which is awesome, by the way). If there’s only one player, a (tough! – only three people managed to beat it over the course of the day!) AI plays the other paddle.
A pair of SNES controllers adapted for use as USB controllers which I happened to own already.

I felt that the day, event, and game were a success. A few dozen people played Pong and explored the other technology on display. Some got nostalgic about punch tape, huge floppy disks, and even mechanical calculators. Many more talked to the digital archives folks and I about the challenges and importance of digital archiving. And a good time was had by all.

I’ve open-sourced the entire thing with a super-permissive license so you can deploy it yourself (you know, on your ultrawide video wall) or adapt it as you see fit. Or if you’d just like to see it for yourself on your own computer, you can (but unless you’re using a 4K monitor you’ll probably need to use your browser’s mobile/responsive design simulator set to 3200 × 1080 to make it fit your screen). If you don’t have controllers attached, use W/S to control player 1 and the cursor keys for player 2 in a 2-player game.

Happy 46th birthday, Pong.

Digest for November 2018

Summary

This month I reimplemented arcade classic Pong for its 46th birthday/World Digital Preservation Day (note 1, note 2) and set it up to play on a 15-screen videowall at the Weston Library in Oxford.

I also shared thoughts on why web developers should use CSS before adding JS, an explanation of the history of the North Sentinelese, and a tear-jerking Christmas short film.