Aku Aku

Suggestion: Take a look at comet through FireBug

FireBug is a wonderful tool for web development. You guys probably already know about it, but perhaps not. It is a FireFox extension that gives you a lot of details on CSS and Ajaxy errors. For instance, just loading http://www.notcomet.com/compose shows 49 errors in FireBug. Most of them appear to be CSS:

Comet_firebug

If I click on one of the css file names in the right column there, it even pops up the relevant CSS file with the line highlighted. It's heaven. FireBug has lots of tools to help you drill down on CSS issues, like Inspect Element which lets you pick an element on the webpage and it displays the corresponding CSS and DOM underpinnings.

Btw, don't feel bad about 49, Check out what gmail does:

Gmail_firebug

comet ain't emacs

I just realized Comet is sort of like vi. It's got command mode when you get the [Comet, Compose, Organize, Design, Connect] menu, and visual mode when you're basically blog surfing. That's awesome. I love vi.

a system message store

Again, related to the Inbox thing.

It sure would be nice if all of the emails I get saying 'so and so has connected to you' were also being stored somewhere on the comet site. On Flickr you get an Inbox, but I'd actually like to see something a step better. Like when I log in, some sort of summary like this:

Since your last login

• 3 people have connected to you.
  
• There is 1 new comment on your items.
  
• Your family members have created 6 new blog posts.
• Your friends have created 12 new blog posts.

Each of these lines would be a link. If you click on it, you get some dhtml action that inserts a sublist under the item you selected. So if I clicked on the first line, this would appear:

• (icon) Condaleeza     [checkbox] connect as [checkbox] friend [checkbox] family
  
• (icon) Dubya              [checkbox] connect as [checkbox] friend [checkbox] family
• (icon) ThePenguin     [checkbox] connect as [checkbox] friend [checkbox] family

This way I could quickly reciprocate links.

The other links in the original list would lead to other context specific actions. In the other three cases I guess these would all be just direct links to the comments/posts in question. One piece of meta information I'd like to see is some indication on whether or not a specific blog post is non-public. I would be much more likely to click on a link to a post I knew I could only see because I was marked friend or family in someones connections.

intrasystem messages?

Is there no way to send a private message to someone in the system other than leaving a comment on one of there library items (posts/media/etc)?

In relation to my previous "cc" post, I guess the user needs an inbox to receive the cc'd comment.

cc a comment

I just left a comment on a post and was thinking it would be nice if you could cc: a blog comment to someone else on the system. Hitting the cc button near the comment text area input would create the cc text field dhtml-style. Then it could autofill from your connection list (predictive typing).

Then I could cc my comment to mie and she would get a link to it in the original context.

Tag hints

When displaying the option

View other items tagged “qotd”:

• Posts,
• Photos ,
• Books ,
• Movies ,
• Music

It would be nice if it was something like this:

View other items tagged “qotd”:

• Posts(1),
• Photos (0),
• Books(1),
• Movies(0),
• Music(0), All on Comet(233)

BTW, I guess I like the comma delimiter for adding multiple tags at once if I look at it purely and not think that it should be just like Flickr since "everyone" is used to that. I'm torn though, there's something to be said for sticking with implicit standards too.

QOTD

The Question of the Day box is a neat idea. It would be nicer if it were AJAX enabled too though, so submiting doesn't force a page reload. It should feel like a low cost interaction as much as possible to get people to participate without necessarily switching away from whatever they were intially doing on the page that contains the QOTD form. On slower connections (there's still lots of dialup in the Mom and Pop world) AJAX really improves the user experience. Comet seems to have multiple personality disorder when it comes to this issue.

Also, how can I see everyone's posts tagged with qotd? There needs to be some sort of "View all public items tagged xxxx" when looking at an individual's tag screen.

The best present I ever received

A 300 baud modem for my Commodore 64

Standardize the Navigation

I find myself constantly trying to figure out how to get from one point to another. For instance in the page shown after posting a new blog entry, the "Hi, Dav Yaginuma" thing up on the top right of the header is no longer a link to my profile like it is on other pages (http://www.notcomet.com/compose/posted)

Every page should have these links at least: My Profile, My Blog, Sign Out

Collections: What Are They?

What is this Collection thing all about (under the Organize tab)? All it lets you do is create a new named "collection" as far as I can tell. How do you add items to it?

I was thinking maybe this was a way for me to import my comic book collection CSV table or something.

Designed By a Tree

I love this concept of creating a font which is carved into a tree and then updated yearly by capturing how the tree has modified it by growing.

 

 

 

Food Delivery 2021

Ran across an interesting project which at initial glance is about food delivery called Free Food. As I explain below, that's free as in speech not beer.

The creator of it, Noah Levenson, has a pretty good intro video:

Given the project name, at first I thought it was about getting food that would be thrown out distributed to hungry folks, but watching the video, it became clear that this is more about being able to order food directly from verified local restaurants on a decentralized trust network and avoiding the (almost criminally) inefficient middle man services like DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc. The README for the project explains the goals well and has a quick run down on why the middle man food "delivery" apps/services are so bad.

Using a decentralized network (think BitTorrent more than BitCoin) it allows for restaurants owners to verify their ownership of a particular local restaurant and publish their menus. This protects against the type of unauthorized listings and other fakery that the middle man services engage in, so you know you're dealing with the real restaurant. Hungry people can find the menus of nearby restaurants and place orders. Reference implementations of the diner and restaurant clients are shown, although I didn't see the source for them available. Presumably the restaurant uses its existing delivery staff for the delivery, or you can pick up.

This is an interesting project, particularly because it's potential goes well beyond just restaurant delivery. Really any resource that can benefit from decentralized (no valueless middle man required) localized (relevant to you, where you are now) discovery can benefit from this type of system. In theory a delivery drivers could advertise themselves as resources and the system could do the matchmaking. Since the network is decentralized this would mean they wouldn't have to share their fee with a middle man network provider.

I'd definitely give this a shot if it started up in my area. In the meantime there is a better sort of food delivery service that I've been using lately and have been quite happy with. It is called Club Feast (use my referral code dav1 if you try it out!). While it still is a middle man service, they have a twist on it that should benefit both the restaurants and the delivery drivers. It requires you to order your meals hours in advance (it used to be the previous day but in the past month they have been able to move it up to same day). This allows the restaurant and delivery network time to optimize the food preparation and the routes. It is a subscription service, which means you sign up for a certain number of meals a week and pre-pay for them as credits. It lets unused credits stack up and you can pause, so it is fair to the subscriber. The meal credits themselves are $7 each, so the meals are inexpensive although limited to what the restaurant decides to make available for $7. There are tons of options though so that has not been a problem for me in San Francisco. It seems like a great win-win-win compromise for the restaurants, drivers and customers, although I would love for a journalist to investigate and report on the actual outcomes.

Would a robust Free Food network be better than Club Feast? Perhaps? CF optimizes a somewhat different problem, but perhaps that could be layered into FF as well? Is there additional value CF could bring that benefits from its centralization? Not really sure. Some things I am sure about are that both of these are better than the dominant centralized apps, and that Free Food really needs to change its name, and the paltry amount of tests in `libfood` is scary 😂.

 

An Ode to Roblox as a Gathering Place

I haven't spent a lot of time in Roblox, even though both of my kids have spent significant amounts of their time and my money there, but this essay about how it compares to those places where teenagers hang out and create their own space away from the rest of the world really resonates. It makes me want to give it a try again.

Some choice excerpts:

On his first experience in Roblox:

In one of the very first games we played together (a work-in-progress safari game, the link to which I have since lost), V became a zebra, and I was a lioness. We ran around a broad plain populated by other animals, trees in the distance, low clouds overhead, and the buzzing of insects on a 2-minute loop. The chat was full of messages from prey to prey, predator to predator. V was almost immediately killed by a cheetah who then got in the chat to say, “Overyone come to pr,” “theres meat.” Summoned, I did so, and as I ate the still-living digital body of my friend in the company of a stranger in the shape of a wild dog, I thought, “Oh. This is special.”

On the game creation tools:

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Roblox Studio is the Toolbox. Other game engines have assets stores, but none of them feel like this: a rollicking, copyright-fucked, messy, virus-filled, unsortable pile of labor and of love.

On the long tail of forgotten worlds (games) waiting to be stumbled upon:

But the things I am making in Roblox are not what are unique or compelling about Roblox, and the same could be said for most of the big games that populate the platform’s front page. Instead, what is so special here are the millions of bizarre little worlds, all networked together and waiting (mostly empty, sometimes for over a decade) to be dropped into and explored with friends.

On the "brutal" monetization situation:

As a developer, you can monetize your own games in a variety of ways, from the above-board (tip jars! cosmetics!) to the scammy. Developers earn 70% of Robux spent in their games, which is a pretty standard cut for an app store/developer split. However, getting USD back out of Robux is a different story. The payout exchange rate drops to $0.0035 USD per 1 Robux, meaning the takeaway in real world currency is roughly 24.5% of any in-game commerce—a brutally extractive exchange rate.

Fighting Date Rape With Nail Polish

Now that Bill Cosby got an early release from prison, my friend Paul brought my attention to the company Undercover Colors that developed a clear nail polish that allows you to check a drink for drugs by dipping a fingernail into the drink. The nail polish changes colors if drugs are encountered.

Brilliant! And love that it was founded by NC State students (didn't to school there, but did participate in their rugby club as a townie).

 

It looks like the product has evolved slightly to a more typical strip test kit though. I supposed the manufacturing costs proved too high? Hopefully they are still working on the more subtle version.

Post Pandemic Predictions

I started compiling this list before George Floyd was murdered, and its triteness bothers me now so I'm just going to post it and move on.

In no particular order:

• Masks largely stay culturally accepted in flu and allergy seasons from now on in the USA, but will always carry a political connotation so some groups will never wear them and mock those that do, but like punk rockers have always mocked people in suits.
• 15 years from now, a common trope will be determining how old some young adult is by what basic K-12 subject they seemed to have completely missed. "How old is Alexandra? Well she can never remember what a gerund is, she must be 27-28."
• It'll be seen as the inflection point for polyamory going mainstream when the released masses just can't get enough of each other 😂.
• 2021: long hair on dudes is back in fashion.
• The artist live stream phenomenon is too beloved to simply disappear, but outdoor live music venues are going to see a boom. There might even be a combination of the two.