Mitch's Blog

Ace Atkins bids Robert B. Parker’s Spenser farewell. After 10 novels, Atkins looks back at what makes the Boston detective character so compelling.

The Surprising Possibilities of See-Through Wood. Transparent wood is tougher than transparent plastic and glass and has potential practical applications in smartphone screens, insulated windows and more.

How the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections. Continual reinfection was not the “new normal” Biden advertised. How did we get here?

Why Do We Build Houses in the Same Way That We Did 125 Years Ago?

Walking the dog in the park this morning, I saw a runner wearing a Santa hat, a runner wearing a Christmas sweater, and a pack of bicyclists that included one wearing a rope of Christmas lights around his neck—the old-style, big teardrop-shaped lights.

Every once in a while, I pick up a call from an unidentified caller rather than letting it ring through. It’s almost always a telemarketer or other variety of scammer. And then I’m disappointed because I can’t think of a way to mess with them.

Maybe I should take improv classes?

I’m intrigued by Dave Winer’s distinction between conversation and publishing. He’s talked elsewhere about blogging as a kind of thinking out loud.

BlueSky upgrade: Now you can see Profiles and posts on the web without logging in, and it also supports RSS feeds.

I want a single client for all the Twitter spinoffs: Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads all in one place. RSS and Tumblr too. This step by BlueSky is a step in the right direction.

This was a pain for me to figure out but once I got it figured it, it was simple.

Use the line tool. Instead of clicking and then dragging—which will draw a single line—click at the start of your shape, then click on the next corner, and then the next corner, and so on until you’re done.

To close the shape, your final click should be on the starting point. You can customize with the fill tool—if you do, then when you close the shape, you’ll automatically get a color fill.

Use the curved-line selection for wavy edges, and the straight-line selection for nice, straight edges.

If you don’t close the shape, you end up with a multi-point or wavy line instead.

Here’s a video that shows you how to use the line tool with clear written instructions in the extended caption.

I should illustrate this with screenshots but I need to move on now. Maybe another time.

I needed to draw an L-shaped box for a diagram. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to draw it using Excalidraw. I found this YouTube video. I then had to figure out why the audio wouldn’t play. I had this problem yesterday and thought I had resolved it but I guess not.

After ten minutes of that, I tried a different video and the audio played just fine.

Aha, I said to myself—audio does not play because there is no audio.

I scrubbed back and forth in the video trying to figure out what they were doing. No luck.

Then I expanded the caption and discovered there are also detailed instructions in the caption. Hooray!

I fiddled for about two minutes and got a nice, L-shaped box.

That was easy! I declared to myself.

Conclusions:

1. YouTube instructional videos for software are evil. Please, please, please just give me written documentation with diagrams, and maybe the occasional animated GIF to illustrate where to click and mouse around and so forth.
2. That’s really weird usage of the word “easy.”