voxygen.net » The Web

Outside the interface

~LS~ — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:10:23 +0000

Today I opened something somewhere and got another nag message from Google about its new privacy policy. The nag message invited me to “dismiss” it, a language choice that reflects a mildly amusing and disturbing political and interpersonal frame that we’ve developed with internet computing. Perhaps my amusement about being nagged over privacy derives from my almost-divorced status, but that is neither here nor there.

I’m not going to waste time knifing through the current policy change. The short version: it will consolidate the privacy options for multiple Google services into one statement to accept or reject with one click of a button, all for the sake of clarity and simplicity. Bundled privacy, in other words. I’ll get back to Google first, but I want to talk about the issue of interface. This will be a branching, circuitous route, so bear with me.

Sherry Turkle’s [...]

I’m back

~LS~ — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 10:28:49 +0000

I’m waiting for Typekit to populate/propagate my font. I’m using Cooper. It’s been some time since I’ve blogged. There’s so much to say I don’t know where to begin. I’ll just chalk it up to a lost and found year. The font makes the webdesign. I have to finish rebooting things here.

As always, the design reflects things about my life too numerous to go into. For instance, I tried to de-clutter and get things squared away into a single-file simple column. I failed. However, things did get shoved to the bottom, all linky and soldier-like, messy in an orderly fashion, but overwhelming from a big-picture perspective.

The Sells-Jaros household is now just the Sells household. The Jaros household will be a household with someone else. Quite surreal. The Sells household is also without the beloved Pach Du. That was a devastation too great to be accounted for – [...]

Where’s Neil Postman when you need him?

~LS~ — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 01:22:35 +0000

I’m contemplating teaching Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death in my Introduction to Humanities class this semester, particularly Chapter 4 (“The Typographic Mind”). I don’t feel like scanning the chapter and I couldn’t find a pdf or doc online to use. Then it occurred to me that my students in all likelihood won’t read anything anyway, so why waste time scanning a document in the first place. I began to look for Sparknotes. I know, I’m bankrupt as an educator. At least I opted not to show the seventh grade history teacher’s youtube version of the Renaissance. I should get props for that.

Anyway, in my surfing, I ran into an amusing exchange on a forum. I don’t think the people involved were amused. I was, though, but in a depressing and ironic way. The exchange is started by a desperate student trying to locate a free copy of the [...]

Ten Tech Gratitudes for 2010

~LS~ — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 07:52:49 +0000

(In no particular order)

1. Droid

I bought my Droid in November 2009 and it has changed how I interact with people, sometime for the worse, but usually for the better. On the one hand, even though I’m a technophile, I really don’t like the 24/7 culture of new communication technology. When I first got a cell phone, I only used it to call out and only for emergencies. Now, the convenience and entertainment value of a smart phone make me wonder why I went so long without one. I still have a bad habit of leaving my ringer off, missing calls, and forgetting all about the phone’s existence. But there have been so many situations where the cell phone saved me many hassles and headaches.

2. Palm Pre free WiFi hotspot from Verizon

You can’t go wrong with free wifi.

3. Audible.com

Essential for long trips. I’m working my [...]

A funeral for my e-texts page

~LS~ — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:58:41 +0000

My first version of Voxygen was posted in 1996. It was fun building the most rudimentary webpage and exploring what could be done on the internet. Since then, things have changed so much so that I feel like I’m on another planet. Sometimes I wonder whether not I am suffering from “information fatigue.” Wondering? No…I know I am. I don’t feel the extreme levels of anxiety or sleeplessness that it presumably provokes. I have noticed, however, that I can’t keep up with Facebook — I bookmark hundreds of things my friends post and then spend too much time deleting them without reading any of them because the list is obscenely long. I no longer surf any of my usual reading spots. RSS readers have made blog surfing incredibly easy. The downside, however, is that with a simple click of a button, I flood my RSS reader with [...]

Orly

~LS~ — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:43:35 +0000

I know I’m not the only one who has noticed Orly Taitz’s humorous resemblance to the Orly Owl. Still I couldn’t resist pointing it out again since it definitely bears repeating. In honor of my astounding powers of perception, I have made my very first “Orly Taitz Orly Owl” which you can see below!

Spam comments

~LS~ — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:15:31 +0000

Thank God for Akismet keeping my blog clean. I just now reviewed some of the posts trapped in the Akismet toilet bowl. Hysterical. Some trends I’ve noticed include

1. People who are obviously not native English speakers posting in Engrish. The errors are amusing. Yet I have to wonder if some SEO company is outsourcing spam comments along the lines of third world WoW gold farmers.

2. The usual “your post is interesting, you’re brilliant, I will come back and read you every day.” These comments are completely random and usually don’t fit the content of the post. I don’t find them amusing, just annoying.

3. The sneaky comments. These sound like they are actually commenting on your post at a glance but if you look at the email address or web address of the poster it’s clearly a spammer. Luckily, Akismet catches these too.

4. The “hey, why’d you [...]

WordPress 3

~LS~ — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:12:51 +0000

One of my summer goals was to learn WordPress 3 and convert my websites to the new platform. I did master some of the basics of the new WordPress, but I didn’t get the chance to do the conversion. I set up my website for my classes (laurasells.net), though, and I was quite pleased that I could figure it all out. WordPress 3 was complicated until I got the hang of it.

I used the Hybrid theme framework, which made a huge difference.The Hybrid theme framework is free, but any support beyond the basic installation is only available if you buy a membership to the forums. That’s a disappointment and it rubs against my desire for open source free information.

One thing I do like about the new platform is that it incorporates many of the plugins I use. That’s a relief. I still don’t understand [...]

Email signatures

~LS~ — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:13:02 +0000

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of email with a certain type of signature file that cracks me up. Usually the emails are from people in corporate offices, but some people at school have them too. They are wordy, legalistic disclaimers about privacy and liability. They are often difficult to understand and they sound full of it. I know the people who have these signatures attached to their emails usually have no control over their presence. In some cases, though, that’s not the truth.

So I’m taking revenge. I have written my own signature file and here it is:

Caution: electronic email sent through the internet is not secure and could be intercepted by CARNIVORE, Echelon, NarusInsight, Amazon.com, Google.com, or other government or commercial surveillance entities. For your protection, do not send any information whatsoever over the internet. Any information that you do send will be considered the intellectual property [...]

WordPress 3

~LS~ — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:46:56 +0000

It looks scary.