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Responsive Email

I was going to put together a post complaining about #email #newsletters that still assume you’re reading on a desktop and send out layouts that rely on a wide screen size and end up with 2pt type on a #mobile phone – you know, where most people read their email these days.

Then I stumbled on this #usability article by Jakob Nielsen.

From 2012.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-email-newsletters/

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The funny thing is that #HTML is #responsive by default. In the very early days, it was *always* responsive except when you added preformatted text. Once you got a little more rendering capability (tables, images and image maps) you had people designing websites who were accustomed to fixed-size media, and the paradigm stuck.

Build for 800×600. Build for 1024×768. Hey, we have widescreen now. What do you mean the window isn’t always fullscreen?

And so on.

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Being able to apply relative sizes to everything, and being able to tweak the layout based on the logical screen size instead of physical pixels is an amazing improvement in the flexibility of anything formatted in HTML+CSS.

(And of course higher-definition displays, but a responsive layout can still make itself usable on some of those older screen sizes.)

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COVID, weird

It turns out the person I caught it from also tested negative for Covid during their illness…and then came down with actual Covid after they recovered. Fortunately they seem to be on the mend from that now too.

That means (a) whatever I caught from them wasn’t Covid and (b) we haven’t been around them in long enough that we don’t have to worry about it having been a Covid exposure too.

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COVID, confused

All three of our tests came back negative. So I don’t know what I have, but apparently it’s not COVID.

(One false negative, sure, but 3? Not likely.)

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And now the kid’s mad that he has to go back to school on Monday because we haven’t tripped the COVID isolation protocol after all.

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I’m kind of disappointed, weirdly enough. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for almost 2 years and thought it finally had, and dropped in a way that would do minimal damage to the 3 of us.

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On the plus side, if it really isn’t COVID, I probably won’t need to isolate for the full 10 days, just until my symptoms clear up.

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I probably should isolate as if it was covid, just to be sure.
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Possibilities:
1. It’s not COVID, it’s something else. Even though the symptoms match and it’s massively surging in this area
2. I’m the only one who caught it and mine was a false negative.
3. They both caught it and have already cleared it out to the point of testing negative, and mine was a false negative.
4. All 3 tests are false negatives.

I’m really not sure which is most likely.

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Covid, food: Tonight’s dinner taste test

Tonight’s dinner taste test

Garlic: yes. Roasted potatoes: barely. Roasted radishes: delayed taste. Kale: yes. Carrots: no. Bell peppers & onions: kind of. Soy sauce: yes

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And dessert test.

Maple cream cookie: Similar to the chocolate chip cookie yesterday, where it initially didn’t taste sweet at all until after a few seconds of chewing. And fortunately I can still taste maple!

A 60% cocoa Ghirardelli square tastes like a 72%.

A mint-filled square tastes more intensely minty.

A sea salt caramel square tastes like salty chocolate.

covid, spice cabinet

So this is interesting. I can smell most of the dried herbs fine – oregano, thyme, dill, cloves. Rosemary is kind of faint, but I can pick it up.

Garlic is intense.

I can smell cinnamon but not nutmeg, which is odd.

And here’s the really weird one: paprika, ancho, black pepper, cayenne and ginger all smell subtly off from normal. Like when you get a chile that’s normally spicy but isn’t, and you can still taste the flavor but it doesn’t have the bite you expect.

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I also tried tasting a few sauces.

Ketchup and mustard tasted more sour than usual. Plain yellow mustard was too intensely sour.

Teriyaki tasted a little more like sweet & sour sauce.

Gochujang & caramel were both a little bit off, but I couldn’t quite place how.

Chocolate syrup was interesting, because I could pick up the chocolate taste before the sweetness, so it started out tasting like darker chocolate.

Covid, food: Weirdest thing is the taste/smell impact…

Got what is so far a mild case of what’s almost certainly covid, mostly fatigue & runny nose (yay boosters!).

Weirdest thing is the taste/smell impact. It hasn’t gone out completely, it’s more like taking an audio equalizer and readjusting the sliders so that some frequencies are barely audible while others are still normal. Umami’s solid, sour’s a bit blunted, sweetness is even fainter. At least food still tastes like food so far.

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And some of the fainter tastes do kick in after a while. I tried a chocolate chip cookie, and at first it was like eating a cracker or plain biscotti, but after a few seconds of chewing I could taste the chocolate.

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And yes, I have considered experimenting with the spice cabinet…

Ugh…my home computer clearly needs some hardware help.

Ugh…my home computer clearly needs some hardware help. No Man’s Sky isn’t the only game causing it to shut down under load.

I guess it’s time to figure out whether the power supply needs to be replaced or I just need to blast a couple year’s worth of dust bunnies off of the CPU fan.

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Actually it can’t be that long, I replaced the graphics card last summer just before the chip shortage started driving prices sky-high (damn that was lucky timing), and I’m sure I would have cleaned it out at the time.

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Covid vaccine

Got the second shot! Here we go, immune system, you’ve got this!

$Scan from the manga Cells at Work showing a man in a White Blood Cell cap shouting \$

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I really liked Outer Wilds

In response to a post about “chill games”

I really liked Outer Wilds. A space exploration game that starts in a forest, where you can toast marshmallows on multiple planets, the whole system is in a time loop, environments change drastically between the early and later parts of the loop, and you find other astronauts by listening for the music they’re playing.

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Huh, Verizon has sold Yahoo and AOL. For half of what they paid for them…

Huh, Verizon has sold Yahoo and AOL.

Verizon sells AOL and Yahoo for about half of what it paid

For half of what they paid for them. 🤦‍♂️

To a private equity firm. 😬

Flickr and Tumblr REALLY lucked out that Verizon put in the effort to look for a photo-sharing company and a blogging company to sell them to instead of just muddling along with no idea what to do with them until they just wanted to unload them.

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Expanded on K2R: Ya-who? Flickr and Tumblr Were Lucky!

Waiting at home for a video link is in some ways better…

Waiting at home for a video link is in some ways better than waiting at the doctor’s office, because you’re *home*, but there’s always that nagging suspicion that the email with the conference link has been lost and they’ve been waiting for you to connect for the last 10 minutes and will just move onto the next patient.

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It has now been an hour since the front office called to do check in over the phone. No message has arrived with the link to video chat with the actual doctor.

*yawn*

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So it turns out the zoom link was buried in a message from way back when I scheduled the appointment, and they marked me as a no show. Rescheduled with another doctor at the practice who has an open slot this afternoon.

The appointment info in their portal said that directions would be sent in a message…but not that they already had been.

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Found a note from one of the neighbor kids for the 9YO, written in chalk

Went out for a walk this morning. Found a note from one of the neighbor kids for the 9YO, written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of the house: “Hi ___! From ___”

Saw several more as I walked around the block. Apparently he wanted to say hi to all the kids he knows.

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Finally recovered enough from the flu to get out for a walk in the neighborhood (while that’s still an option).

I think this first bird (possibly a goldfinch?) was trying to practice social distancing, though the crow in the third photo seems to be doing a better job. The house finch was such a bright red that I thought it had to be another kind of bird until I looked at the photos.

#photo #birds #nature #finch #HouseFinch #goldfinch #crow

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Goldfinch(?) on iNaturalist
House Finch on iNaturalist

covid/ca/flu

So, California has issued a statewide stay-at-home-unless-absofuckinglutely-necessary order.

https://covid19.ca.gov/stay-home-except-for-essential-needs/

The 9YO is already climbing the walls.

And I’m still recovering from the damn flu, so I’ve basically missed the window for any trips outside except for groceries (and maybe a chest xray if this very non-covid-like cough doesn’t clear up)

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LA County order earlier today specifically said neighborhood walks were OK as long as you kept your distance. The statewide one doesn’t.

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I find myself thinking about Sam’s speech a lot. About how in the stories that really matter, people faced overwhelming darkness, and had a lot of chances to stop, but they kept going. A Reminder About Story Middles

I find myself thinking about Sam’s speech a lot. About how in the stories that really matter, people faced overwhelming darkness, and had a lot of chances to stop, but they kept going.

A Reminder About Story Middles

A Reminder About Story Middles: Heroes Don’t Give Up

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Gotta squeeze every last drop of “monetization” outta those profiles!

Reply to @dansup’s link to Instagram now forces people to sign in to view public profiles

@dansup Gotta squeeze every last drop of “monetization” outta those profiles!

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@dansup Seriously, though, I’ve been slowly moving away from Instagram all year. The more control FB exerts on it, the less it feels like a place I want to be.

I’m not at the point of deleting my account yet, but I’m not posting there anymore & I’m seriously considering dropping all the accounts I follow except for people I actually know, and paring down my archive.

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Literally confusing hawks and doves.

Usually #iNaturalist’s AI is pretty good at narrowing down to a genus, but sometimes it can get confused. Like this #pigeon sitting on a silk floss tree branch. It was “pretty sure” it was a *hawk*.

Um, nope!

I can sort of see that with the first image, but the second one makes it blindingly obvious!

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/30408488

#birds #nature

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@KelsonV I just realized it’s literally confusing hawks and doves.

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Took the new camera to WonderCon for cosplay photography

Took the new camera to #WonderCon for #cosplay #photography.

1. I finally have a camera that can really handle inside lighting at a convention center!

2. I’ve gotten too used to just capturing costumes, instead of composing interesting shots.

2a. My 8YO took 1 photo all weekend (#InsideOut) & it ended up being the best that day. I took the lesson & improved my shots the next day, including the other 3 here.

Album on Flickr

#HarryPotter #BeautyAndTheBeast #LittleShopOfHorrors

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There was a lot of Harry Potter cosplay at WonderCon…

There was a lot of #HarryPotter #cosplay at #WonderCon this past weekend! Here are some of my photos. There are a lot more that I missed – people dressed as the Malfoys, students of course, other professors and so on.

My full gallery for the convention is on Flickr at

#Voldemort #BellatrixLestrange #Hagrid #ProfessorTrelawney #Dumbledore #ArthurWeasley #RitaSkeeter #ProfessorUmbridge #GilderoyLockhart

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