I old enough to be one of those who witnessed the birth of MTV and music videos… but I rarely watch those these days… but today, I decided to spend some time watching what’s « hot ». A few observations are in order: video duration is short (less than 3 min), hyper-short scenes abuse (less than two seconds in duration), 4:3 screen ratio is strange (is this a thing now?)… I barely can stand this shit now. I’m getting old, I guess.

Manuel Moreale link posting on the subject of header images on blog posts:

“I’ll go one step further Nelson, I have a growing hatred towards pointless images in blog posts in general, I don’t even care if they’re AI-generated or not. If they’re there as part of the content then by all means use them but if you’re just adding a stock image from unsplash to make the page “feel” more interesting then you’re just part of the broader problem that’s plaguing the web.”

Header images do add to the page load times, yes I do use AI-generated images from time to time, like in this post where I wanted to make a point, and I use many of my personal photos… like in this edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter. Yes, I prefer header images on that specific blog because it is part of its visual theme. So then what? That’s MY corner of the web. I do what I find cool and creative and whatever.

I’m guessing he’s reading none of my blogs because of this, among other reasons?

Here is a thought about recent tweaks to RSS importer on Micro.blog. For example, now it’s possible to import photos in the RSS feed published by Glass. With this, when I publish a photo on Glass, it gets posted on my blog too. The same photo on two platforms. As much as I like the POSSE principle for writing, it doesn’t fit well with my desire to share photos on special places, like a photo-dedicated service. Glass is such a special place, just like Pixelfed. What would be the point of having a single photo spread out on other platforms? I see places like Glass like museums. Pieces of art hanged on the wall of a museum are unique to this place. It makes the place unique. I’m still thinking about all this.

So I put my M1 Mac mini for sale this weekend on Facebook Marketplace. 🤢 Got an offer for 50% of my asking price. I said, no, nice try . Got a second offer from someone else with a slightly reduced priced. I said ok. I went poking his Facebook profile page just to see if I’m being scammed👀🤨🧐. From the buyer’s profile and posts I can infer the following: he believes in conspiracies, he is an anti-vaccine, he is a proud pro-Trump, and the icing on the cake: he is pro-Russian. 🤮

I came close to cancel the deal… but I didn’t. Just give the money and GTFO.

Paying to be a beta tester: is this a new trend? Glass Series was available to patron subscribers only while being in beta testing. RealMac Software offers Elements in beta as a subscription but at a reduced price. Active beta testers are actually paying of their time to use a software still being debugged and refined. Isn’t that enough? I understand that building software is hard and requires resources… but paying to be a beta tester seems to cross a line here.