works of wanderlust

Category: technology & toys

I am a nerd by nature and a geek by trade, and I have a few things to say about all kinds of technology from enterprise platforms to playful games.

  • technical shuffle

    For a guy who claims to be a strategic thinker and a web guru I sure did my own stuff in the wrong order.

    To be fair on myself this whole incorporating thing snuck up on me from around a corner and I’ve been adapting and reacting as best I can. And yesterday I found myself doing a whole pile of digital reorganizing as a result.

    I wanted to use this domain.

    Specifically, a while back I made 8r4d.com into my primary domain name. That is to say, while I own and manage about six domains at any given time, this one has been following me solidly through most of my career. When I opted to name my corporation along the same vein, I found myself needing to get some kind of corporate presence onto the top of it all.

    Problem is, I’ve been using it for other things.

    This blog, for one.  Plus I’ve got a whole load of homebrew projects running on various subdirectories and such. Also, the last thing I want is eight different wordpress installs running on the same server.

    My solution was a shuffle. I installed a fresh copy of wordpress at the top of everything, mucked around with my htaccess file to ensure the minimum amount of stuff broke, turned that same wordpress install into a multisite mode cms, migrated at least three of my websites into the new install as sub-sites (including this one which is running on a whole new installation today than it was when you read that post yesterday) and relinked up everything to seem pretty seamless. 

    I’m sure I’ll run into something quirky, but as it stands I now have a pretty robust setup to manage a corporate presence at the root of this domain and still keep all my little quirky hobby code running and managed.

    Y’know. In case you were wondering.

  • obscurity by design

    Blogs tend to get looped in with a broader definition of “social media” –and that is fair, to a point–but there is a much more modern attitude around social media fatigue and frustration to which that inclusion I may be less inclined to agree.

    I am going to write something that may make your eyes roll into the back of your head: I deleted Facebook. Seriously. But here’s the part where you can stop thinking of it as performative righteousness: I deleted Facebook over five years ago and have not looked back. People send me links and I ignore them. I am told someone sent me a message that I didn’t respond to there, and I say I have not logged in in years. Folks suggest I should check the online marketplace or visit their community page or whatever, whatever, whatever, and I shrug and tell them the same as I just wrote for you above: I deleted Facebook.

    This is a complex topic, social media.

    Our whole world seems to revolve around a handful of little corporate micro-blogging platforms that steamroll through the barriers to entry but, like a set of tire spikes at the entrance, create a troublesome blockade to escape again.

    So then that’s the thing. A lot of people “perform” the little notion that they have escaped social media apps, but like abandoning your car and walking out of a lot with tire spikes at the gate, you haven’t really deleted Facebook if your account is still there. You haven’t left Twitter if you could log back in and pick back up on whim. You haven’t escaped the doomscroll of Tiktok if you offload the app from your phone.

    I started blogging in 2001 and created my own little platform upon which I heaped countless hours of effort to write and post and share and converse. All of this was before the apps we know as social media were even twinkles in their tech bro’s thirsty eyes. And I write about it now because I am walking a fine line between grumpy old man yells at cloud (services) and clear-eyed neo-luddite looks at a world consumed by unidirectional experiences driven by inhuman algorithms that are literally destroying our society–and every day I feel like I need to say something.

    So, when I write that blogs tend to unfairly get looped in with social media what I mean to tell you is that sure, blogs are a kind of spiritual older sibling to the likes of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, but maybe more of an older step-sibling, born of a different first marriage between society and technology, built and nurtured in a more innocent time, still problematic and ripe for potentially harmful communication, but far less wild and spoilt by their parents bitter fighting. Blogs are related, but they shouldn’t just be looped in with the other kids.

    I tend to fumble over to analogy when I am stabbing around for my point.

    I deleted Facebook but I re-invigorated my blogging because there is something deeply toxic that is being nurtured on those social media platforms that is a little more under control on a private blogging site.

    I suppose we could deconstruct this a little more technologically.

    What is a blog?

    I have built so many now that I take it for granted, but essentially your modern blog, like this very one you are reading, is a giant database of text and images stored on a web server. I log into a piece of blogging software, in my case WordPress, which opens up into a friendly screen that invites me to do all sorts of things: manage my design, check the health of the site itself, change my account or add another user, and probably most importantly add or edit content. I can open a little word processor, type and type and type, upload images, add links and tags and a hundred other little design flourishes. And the big database behind that system keeps track of what I made, stamps a date on it, and let’s me push a publish button that sets that post I made to be visible to the public. All of that means that when you load up my blog, in a fraction of the second the blogging software goes into that database and shows you a reverse chronological list of everything I have created and made public. In my case that means you get a reverse chronological listing of (as of right now) a couple dozen long-winded, text-heavy personal essays with a smattering of photos and images. All of that is stored in a database I control, on a server that I pay for access to use, and no one but me–absolutely no one else–has any control over what appears here so long as I don’t break the rules of the hosting company or the laws of the land.

    You may be thinking that this doesn’t sound too different from, say, Facebook and you’d be right… to a degree.

    What is a social media app, then?

    Well, a lot of that stuff about databases and content uploading and profile management is actually pretty similar to a blog. You log into a piece of software that lets you write something, add pictures or video or links, drop in some hashtags, and press the equivalent of a publish button. But that’s about where the similarities start to diverge. This will be a simplification because (a) every platform is a little different and (b) a lot of this stuff is hidden, secret and proprietary to those companies. But just like me, those companies are managing a piece of software on a piece of technology infrastructure, it is simply a matter of scale. And just like what happens when you visit this site and the database and software work together to build you something to read and view and interact with, those platforms do the same. But where mine is simple and reverse chronological, those platforms have introduced something that we so often hear referred to as The Algorithm. All this means is that rather than a tidy ordered list of the stuff people post fairly, simply, democratically laid out like how I do in my blog, countless factors–from what the company wants you to see to what they think will keep you reading to what they think you might click on to buy, and the list goes on–weight into the order in which the software generates something for you to look at. And that’s it. That’s the difference… and in many ways it’s all the difference in the world.

    You will not be surprised to learn that not that many people read this website. I don’t have much visibility or profile on this big wide internet now dominated by a handful of massive corporate interests. Almost one hundred percent of the users of the internet (statistically speaking, of course) feed their time and energy scrolling through outputs of the software created and curated by Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Tiktok. And you go on these sites, you are entertained (by design) and you never leave… but you roll your eyes at the kinds of people who try to step away. And like trying to drive backwards through the tire spikes, most who try are unsuccessful.

    And then we yell at each other, on those very sites, trying to understand why we feel the way we do about them. Why do we feel empty. Why do we get enraged so easily. Why do we feel drained and broken and mentally bloated from the experience.

    I’m not going to sit here and write that there is any one reason, but I would contend that it comes down to something in the difference between a blog and Facebook feed… in which at the same time I would contend there is simultaneously very little difference, yet all the difference in the world.

    Whenever someone loops an effort for someone, anyone, to maintain a blog into the social media categorization that talks about the decline of the internet, whenever I hear that, I shudder. And I go write a post about it that you may never read, but which will be right here waiting for you in the exact spot where I put it, not promoted by an algorithm with an agenda, nor hidden by anything but my own obscurity.

  • retro gamer, handheld

    I can’t even tell you how many times in the last twenty years I have found myself dabbling in retro game consoles.

    I have multiple computers with emulator software.

    I have a small stack of those mini consoles they sold there for a while, the ones that looked like shrunken versions of the originals.

    I have multiple raspberry pi computers notoriously great at running retro game emulators.

    I even have a generic usb controller purchased almost one hundred percent for the reason that I wanted to play old games on my computer.

    And I have a couple of mostly-legally obtained software “roms” of some of of my childhood favourites.

    Now, I broke down, and bought one of those little stupidly-powerful little handheld consoles that have proliferated the internet in the last couple years.

    If you haven’t heard of those yet, basically–well, since computer processors are so cheap and fast, and high quality little screens are so bright and inexpensive, and the software that runs it all is essentially a lite version of some linux distro, wrapped into a neat little package one can essentially buy a handheld computer that plays retro games (all the way up to the PS2 console generation-ish) for about fifty bucks.

    Fifty bucks!

    Like. I can’t even buy a new PS5 game for that price. And here I’ve got myself a cheap little new toy that I can toss a couple of those aforementioned roms onto and then sit and play great looking games on my couch… for fifty bucks.

    They are not, of course, for the feint of heart. The little system arrived in a cheap little box, with a budget-value memory card, and an instruction booklet that was about one tenth the length of this blog post.

    I have some experience with both linux and emulators, so I was able to poke around and get the system working mostly how I like it. But I can see how someone less techie could struggle and–um–ONE STAR! But I like gadgets, so this is just another one of those things that I can dig into, figure out, and make it work.

    And of course, play some retro games.

  • social games

    I spent nearly a decade feeding the massive social media networks like Facebook and Instagram with my creative output.

    What did it get me?

    I could tell you that I learned some skills in social media engagement, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration because an invisible algorithm did most of the work.

    I could tell you that it gave me an excuse to write and create, but that would be something of a cop out because one shouldn’t need such excuses to practice one’s craft.

    I could tell you that it gave me an audience, but honestly I could have currated an email list of my friends and family and had nearly as many eyes to see what I made.

    What it really did was create value for someone else.

    What the social media networks never admit is that the house is only one guaranteed to win, and it’s always their house. Sure, some folks hit a jackpot and walk out richer and wiser, but most of us spend our creative chips and they vanish into the coffers of the app or network.

    I can’t tell you that you shouldn’t play the social media game, but I can suggest that there are far fewer winners there than there are the rest of us. And I can tell you that I have lately been, and will continue to be, putting more effort into building my own (much smaller and less social) networks with my creative energies.

    I wrote the first half of this post as a professional reflection on social media itself and maybe as a bit of shrouded advice about starting your own blog. But the truth is I’m feeling a little more than bitter about the whole thing. In fact feel more than a bit taken by these systems. Conned. Duped. Played. As have almost all of us.

    I remember participating in the early forum sites. Usenet, in particular, was really pretty much a crude ancestor of Facebook or Reddit: alt.movies.obsessive the joke went. But there was never any pretense that we were doing anything besides chatting with passing strangers, ghosts in the night, words on a screen that we knew were some other person but that person maintained a reputation that was as transient as the dial up connection.

    Obligatory Simpsons reference? Check out Radioactive Man Issue #42 for more explanation, huh?

    What we really did with the social media networks was recreate fame. We invented a way for people to be famous online, and if they were already famous offline to milk that fame even more online. The social networks invented the online celebrity: the influencer, so now rather than clambering to become a tv star or a movie a-lister, anyone with a smartphone, anyone posting anything, anyone participating was really just auditioning for the i-list.

    That was the whole game: the whole point of creating from that moment on was to build a following, become noticed, attract clicks, and generate revenue from it all. The new dream: and we all dreamed that dream because participating was playing was dreaming.

    Even now, you may be reading this going: well, what’s the point then? Why are YOU writing a blog if not to have people read it, if not to create content that persists and, in playing all that, rolls the dice on internet celebrity?

    I don’t know. I don’t know how to break free of that idea other than to do what I have been inclined to do from the beginning: share for the love and zen of sharing, and simply hope that it is enough to exist in a quiet corner of this infinite internet casino avoiding putting any more tokens into the house than needed to keep from getting booted out the door.

  • books if by foot

    I bought a new ebook reader.

    I mean, I don’t really want to go on and on about it. I don’t think I need to elaborate too much on the simultaneous desire to read more “literature” versus doomscrolling on the net. I don’t think I need to bemoan the need to get away from suckling at the teat of Amazon whose billionaire owner has leaned hard into modern corporate fascism. I don’t think I need to to explain the simple techno-joy in upgrading a beloved device to a newer, fancier version. I don’t think so.

    But I upgraded.

    I bought one of the nicer Kobo colour ereaders.

    What I wanted to write about instead of all those other things was that I’ve taken to walking while I read. You know—going for a stroll outside along the clear and obstacle free asphalt paths with my ebook in my hand and just snarfing through a half dozen chapters.

    I’ve completed three books inside of one week, and I’ve got three more on the go. Three!? Yeah. Some fiction, some light non-fiction, and then a big old economics text for when I’m freshly caffienated.

    I dunno.

    Maybe it’s a phase.

    Maybe I’ll get over it. Maybe I’ll trip and hurt myself. Maybe I’ll decide I’d rather look at nature than another screen. But for now, the spring muck is still pretty brown and the world is still pretty empty and the book reader is still pretty new, and I’m enjoying checking some books off my reading list from somewhere besides the couch.