adactio.comAdactio: Jeremy Keith

adactio Journal Links Articles Notes About Jeremy Keith Making websites . Writing books . Speaking at events . Living in Brighton . Working at Clearleft . Playing music . Taking photos . Answering email . Journal 2680 sparkline Links 8729 sparkline Articles 76 sparkline Notes 5374 sparkline Monday, June 29th, 2020 Playing The Virginia Reel on mandolin: https://thesession.org/tunes/812 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SVAK27o4F0 4:56pm Also on Twitter YouTube Instagram Sunday, June 28th, 2020 Playing An Rógaire Dubh (jig) on mandolin: https://thesession.org/tunes/1076 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JHyynJO_Nw 3:20pm Also on Twitter YouTube Instagram Hemimastigophora Probably fewer than a hundred people in the world have seen what you’re looking at right now. Jessica and I were taking turns at the microscope when we were told that. Let me back up a bit and explain how we found ourselves in this this situation… It all started with The Session , the traditional Irish music community site that I run. There’s a big focus on getting together and playing music—something that’s taken a big hit during this global pandemic. Three sections of the website are devoted to face-to-face gatherings: events (like concerts and festivals), sessions , and the most recent addition, trips . The idea with trips is that you input somewhere you’re going to be travelling to, along with the dates you’ll be there. It’s like a hyper-focused version of Dopplr. The site then shows you if any events are happening, if there are any sessions on, and also if there are any members of the site in that locality (if those members have added their location to their profiles). Last August, I added the trips I would be taking in the States. There’s be a trip to Saint Augustine to hang out with Jessica’s family, a trip to Chicago to speak at An Event Apart, and a trip to New York for a couple of days because that’s where the ocean liner was going to deposit us after our transatlantic crossing . A fellow member of The Session named Aaron who is based in New York saw my trip and contacted me to let me know about the session he goes to (he plays tin whistle). Alas, that session didn’t coincide with our short trip. But he also added: I work at the American Museum of Natural History, and if you have time and interest, I can provide you with vouchers for tickets to as many special exhibits and such as you’d like! Ooh, that sounded like fun! He also said: In fact I could give you a quick behind-the-scenes tour if you’re interested. Jessica and I didn’t have any set plans for our time in New York, so we said why not? That’s how we ended spending a lovely afternoon being shown around the parts of the museum that the public don’t usually get to see . It’s quite the collection of curiosities back there! There’s also plenty of research. Aaron’s particular area was looking into an entirely different kingdom of life —neither animal, nor plant, nor fungus. Remarkably, these microscopic creatures were first identified—by a classmate of Aaron’s— by happenstance in 2016 : The hemimastigotes analyzed by the Dalhousie team were found by Eglit during a spring hike with some other students along the Bluff Wilderness Trail outside Halifax a couple of years ago. She often has empty sample vials in her pockets or bags, and scooped a few tablespoons of dirt into one of them from the side of the trail. That’s like a doctor announcing that they’d come across a hitherto-unknown limb on the human body. The findings were published in the paper, Hemimastigophora is a novel supra-kingdom-level lineage of eukaryotes in 2018. In the “backstage” area of the American Museum of Natural History, Aaron had samples of them. He put them under the microscope for us. As we took turns looking at them wriggling their flagella, Aaron said: Probably fewer than a hundred people in the world have seen what you’re looking at right now. 12:09pm Tagged with travel thesession hemimastigophora biology life museum newyork Also on Medium Takin’ five. — Ethan Marcotte I linked to the first of Ethan’s short videos on accessibility last week, but it’s well worth checking out all five: Introduction to using VoiceOver on macOS Designing beautiful focus states Flexible and accessible typesetting Responsively designing with viewport units Designing beautiful and accessible drop caps 10:25am Tagged with accessiblity a11y videos tutorials design screenreaders type css keyboard frontend development fluid responsive Saturday, June 27th, 2020 Playing The Porthole Of The Kelp (reel) by Bobby Casey on bouzouki: https://thesession.org/tunes/263 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHmugs5G_jM 5:19pm Also on Twitter YouTube Instagram W00t! My copy of Purple People has arrived! Really looking forward to reading @QwertyKate ’s “jolly dystopia.” 11:19am Also on Twitter Flickr Instagram Friday, June 26th, 2020 Playing Biddy From Sligo (jig) on mandolin: https://thesession.org/tunes/1672 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZIOZ9v5mdY 5:34pm Also on Twitter YouTube Instagram Grid Cheatsheet A useful resource for CSS grid. It’s basically the spec annoted with interactive examples. 1:24pm Tagged with css grid cheatsheet specification interactive examples layout syntax resource frontend development Why BaseCamp & Hey.com are Wrong About the Apple App Store I feel for BaseCamp, I do. But give up on the native app path. Make sure your existing web interface is a good progressive web app and you can end-run around Apple. 1:22pm Tagged with progressive webapps pwas apple ios native business lockin monopoly empowerment open web hey appstores 100 tunes We got a headstart on the lockdown . A week before the UK government finally stopped dilly-dallying (at the expense of tens of thousands of lives), Clearleft became a remote-only company. At the beginning of this stay-at-home time, I started recording a tune a day . I wasn’t sure how long I’d keep it up, but I’ve managed to keep it going the whole time. Yesterday I recorded my 100th tune . It’s funny how small efforts can build up into a satisfying corpus. It’s not like I’m attempting anything ambitious, like Matthias, who is doing 100 days of writing . Recording one tune isn’t too much hassle. There are days when it’s frustrating and I have to do multiple takes, but overall it’s not too taxing. But now, when I look at the cumulative result , I’m very happy that I didn’t skip any days. One hundred is a nice round number, so this could be a good time to stop. I could quit while I’m ahead. But I think I’ll keep going. Again, despite what the official line might be from the UK government (who have lost all trust), I reckon I’ll be staying at home for a while yet. As long as I’m here, I may as well keep playing. I have plenty more tunes to play . At some point, the daily streak will end. But even then, I think I’ll continue to record tunes like this, even if it becomes more sporadic. If you like these tunes, as well as being here on my own site , they’re all in a YouTube set . So …like’n’subscribe, or something? 11:03am Tagged with tunes irish music quarantunes mandolin bouzouki publishing covid-19 coronavirus recording Also on Medium We Are As Gods A forthcoming documentary about Stewart Brand (with music by Brian Eno). 8:12am Tagged with film documentary trailer stewartbrand longnow biography history wholeearth technology Thursday, June 25th, 2020 Top 10 books about remaking the future | Peter F Hamilton | Books | The Guardian Here then are 10 stories of remaking the future that contain hope — or at least stability. The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North Revenger by Alastair Reynolds Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks Natural History by Justina Robson Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Way Station by Clifford D Simak News from Gardenia by Robert Llewellyn 10:30pm Tagged with sci-fi sciencefiction future bo...