Archives for February 2019

I left off touching on digital bookmarks. I read books. Actual, physical books. Not the digital ones—the old technology. I am tempted by e-readers, though, starry-eyed with notion that they’ll get me reading more—because they are novel, and somehow, someway. This is misguided bunkum, I’m aware, so I’m reluctant to adopt, but: Book-reading is a habit I’m still trying to further ingrain. (Aren’t we all?) And I do need strategies for this century. I would so rather grab my phone, for example, given the vacuumed choice, than a book¹. It’s an unfair contest. This proclivity results partially because I can use my phone with one hand, whereas a book necessitates two.² I’m all-in reading a book. Phones, because of their form factor (small!), feign as if they lend to the art of multitasking, though I don’t manage to do anything besides be completely absorbed by my phone, while I’m on my phone, all that well. I also tend to think, in terms of commitment, of books as being fussy about time and focus, like I can’t casually flip open a book for two minutes and get anything out of it. The obverse of this is that phones are immediately gratifying, and they take no effort to operate. I can glance at my phone and feel strong emotion.

Anyway: Consequently, I have to skew the odds to get myself to read. The phone is one distraction. There are others, and there’s not all that much I’ve found can be done to sway the situation besides impose temporal and spatial constraints. My strats:

1. Borrow from a library (rather than own books). Due dates are strong motivators. (N.B., This is a temporal constraint.) (Also note my deliberate use “a book” and “my phone”—possessive indicators—above.)
2. Place books in sight, in the way, within reach. (N.B., This is a spatial [and visual] constraint.)

That’s basically it.³ And it’s chiefly the due date that gets me reading when I slack. However, when I do open a book, what took me a couple of years to realize is: I often forget where I left off, especially if it was in the middle of a chapter, and this causes your writer momentary panic and Extreme Visceral Consternation to have to regain his bearings. Shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sweaty palms—the works.⁴ The thought of rereading passages—and conjuring déjà vu—is enough to dissuade me (subconsciously) from opening a book and, less obviously, from reading short of a chapter at once (i.e., casually reading in spurts). So, this had (past tense now) been a constant obstacle that precluded me from reading: fear of losing my place. And this phenomenon occurred despite using a bookmark to denote where I’d left off.

I suppose now is the time to divulge my bookmarking history and habits:

My bookmarks are scraps of paper. I enjoyed doing origami as a kid, and a relic of that is that I still find myself folding bits of paper, more often than the average person, probably, so anyway: I was wont to fold paper into rectangles, which I stuck out from the tops of books. All store-bought and school-provided bookmarks I had when I was younger functioned this way—they jutted out and sometimes had a ribbon or tassel on the end. The reason for the bookmark protruding is so that the reader can readily gauge (or flaunt) their progress, I guess. I don’t know—I never thought about why I placed my bookmarks that way (I only mimicked what I saw others doing), and after giving it a moment’s thought, I realized this mannerism is rather nonsensical. So I reassessed the notion of bookmarking, and came up with a more precise, protrusionless method of doing it.

I want to tell, immediately, by looking at the position of my bookmark

1. which page (left or right), and
2. which line

I left off on. This is able to relay that:

Placing the tape in a corner affords four horizontal orientations for the bookmark. This is my key for the tape’s positioning, in relationship to the spine:

1. Inside: right page
2. Outside: left page
3. Facing up: above line
4. Facing down: below line

I now open books knowing exactly where I left off, and I am more apt to read for a minute or two (in short sessions, in spurts).

Make Your Own

Step 1: Fold and Tear/Cut Paper to Size

ProTip: I use a Teflon paper folder to get crisp creases.

Step 2: Tape

I like Pro-Gaff tape. It’s durable, and the neon orange is grossly lurid, which makes the bookmark’s orientation easy to distinguish (plus the bookmark itself difficult to misplace).

¹Or engage in anything else remotely productive, for that matter. The phone trumps all in a bubble.
²I will concede that it’s sometimes possible to hold a book with one hand, but often I need two. Page turns always require a second hand.
³Good lightning, a comfortable chair, and quiet help, of course, but none of those drive causality. I am as likely to sit in a cozy position and doze off.
⁴EVC is a verified medical condition. Look it up.

I want to forget—selectively. That’s why I stick with Google Chrome, even though Safari outclasses it in almost every way. Safari is zippy and mindful of system resources; it doesn’t slurp battery, or ever kick on a laptop’s fan. It’s prompt and polite. I think I’d call it courteous. Even Safari’s dev tools are probably objectively better than Chrome’s at this point.

However, I prefer to surf the web like an amnesiac—like someone who continually forgets, stumbling out of cyberspace, crumpled cig still lightly smoldering, figure mussed, and past erased. And for this reason, my go-to is Chrome. (It can be customized more in this regard than Safari.)

I’m terrified of tracking and predictive services. They ingrain what should be arbitrary, evanescent behaviors. A spontaneous search shouldn’t become an online identity, but, in a self-fulfilling way, it can. To combat this, I only want my web browser to know so much about me at once. When it’s able to build a profile—really, a magnified Polaroid—and it knows where to navigate before I do, I’m done. Volition is shot. I develop browsing patterns that become impossible to break. This was me after predictive features became commonplace in the late 00s. I almost never cleared my history (does anybody?), thus every letter I typed in my location bar corresponded with a website I visited too often. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t change. Web browsing like this is a Groundhog Day-like ad nauseam repeat experience, except nobody ever figures out that they’re a disgruntled news reporter, they don’t fall in love or even bonk a former classmate, and they become generally worse human beings the longer they’ve trod around.

So: I now start each session with a clean slate: No history. No bookmarks. No hocus-pocus predictive services. Drop me into faraway white-sanded Sahara, queue up my magic carpet, and allow me to fly.

Browser Config #1: Cryogenic Chrome

What This Does

This setup preserves your identity, but wipes your history after each browsing session. The author’s most common use case: I’ve visited a bunch of webpages I regret having visited, and these pages recur as suggestions whenever I type in the location bar; Command-Q Chrome and—zap—I start over.

To Enable

1. Install, Configure: Auto History Wipe

Install from the Chrome Web Store then configure options to taste. My configuration:

• Each time Chrome starts:
  • Check: Clear Browsing History
  • Check: Clear Download History
  • Uncheck: Clear Cookies
  • Check: Clear Website Data
  • Check: Clear Cache
  • Uncheck: Clear Saved Passwords
  • Check: Clear Form Autofill Data
• When you exit Chrome:
  • Uncheck: Clear Local Data

Again, I’m trying to keep myself recognized across websites, so that when I choose to navigate anywhere, I’m able to access whatever it is I want with minimal friction. (N.B., cookies are what preserve logins.)

2. Install: Empty New Tab Page

Install from the Chrome Web Store (no configuring necessary).

Without this add-on, the New Tab page will display Google services and your most visited websites (and thus ingrain tendencies). I prefer a blank screen.

3. Configure: Chrome Settings

Open Chrome’s preferences (from the menu bar or Command-,) and configure the following:

• On startup
  • Select: Open the New Tab page
• Advanced: Privacy and security
  • Deactivate: Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar

“Open the New Tab page” is selected by default; you may not need to change this setting. Prediction services will be activated by default. Deactivate this setting.

4. Delete: Bookmarks

Open Chrome’s bookmarks manager (from the menu bar or Option-Command-B), export (if you’d like), and delete everything.

If you keep bookmarks, Chrome will populate them in the location bar (Command-L) as you type (despite decerebrating prediction services). I instead throw URLs I may later reference into text files; Simplenote, nvALT, and Notes.app are all adequate proxies for managing bookmarks.

Browser Config #2: Always Private Safari

What This Does

This setup turns Safari into a burner browser. It saves almost nothing; back and forward navigation work, but no accessible history is maintained, and cookies don’t even persist from tab to tab, let alone from session to session. This configuration is conducive for not lingering online too long.

To Enable

1. Configure: Safari Settings

Open Safari’s preferences (from the menu bar or Command-,) and configure the following tabs/settings:

• General
  • Safari opens with: A new private window
  • New windows open with: Empty Page
  • New tabs open with: Empty Page
• Search
  • Uncheck: Include search engine suggestions

2. Delete: Bookmarks

And, again, keep no bookmarks, otherwise they’ll appear as suggestions in the location bar too. (Access Safari’s bookmark manager from the menu bar or by Option-Command-B.)

I should note: Safari does have an analog to Chrome’s Auto History Wipe—Safari Cleaner—but it hasn’t been updated in years. Steer clear.

If, after a week, I’m already over my latest AdamCap.com redesign, does that count as progress? (Too soon? Not soon enough?)

I’ve launched redesigns in the past (to be enumerated below), and for each I’ve been privately optimistic that the “new wheels” would spurn creativity and drive and that I’d finally start consistently blogging for once, which I never have in the past, starting then, there, on launch. …Now. Any time. Soon. —I always feel the same deep-down-I-know-it-is-hollow optimism—the progression which follows is similar to that which ensues when you splurge on a product or service, thinking it will help engrain some positive habit or end, because with X in hand or at your disposal, “What you want will be so much easier to attain,” and for exactly one week or month, you are motivated, and it is easier to get yourself doing it, whatever it is—reading, losing weight, drinking water, writing—then the shiny new toy loses novelty, you forget about it, or get busy, and all that momentum abruptly decrescendos into a junk drawer and is eventually regifted to your indifferent (but courteous) “Yeah-OK-I’ll-Take-It” sibling or mom or the trash can.

In the case of my web redesigns, what I splurge is time. I put over a month of full-time work into this recent redesign. That is about how long it takes to make a good website. I did not make money during this time (working rate: $0/hour for approx. 197.5 hours from Dec–Jan), and not making money for that long may as well count as splurging money. I justify this cost because I figure during the process I will improve at web development, kick-start a business (or some kind of financial opportunity for myself), and make the money back later. But that is no shot fish in a barrel. And the real reason I ever redesign my blog is because I think if I have it configured “right,” that I’ll start writing more.

I’ve yet to reach “right.” It doesn’t exist. Writing is the hard part of this endeavor for me. I can code and manage a web property with some celerity. But producing content has always been slow, and tweaking stylesheets doesn’t make words flow any faster or more consistently. I’ve needed to write first, design later. The logical progression would be to make do until the habit is firmly established, then clear hindrances by obtaining resources. I’m acting backwards, again, because I am stubborn, but I did plan this redesign more thoughtfully than past ones (truly! [I swear! (really!)] ) which were inspired with mostly aesthetic (and not so many practical) ends in mind.

I’m going to describe a few of the atypical design elements in play for AC2019. (Which, really, I should not need to do, if the design is actually intuitive and good, but this process will (1) help me, at least, better understand what I was going for and (2) make blatant issues blatant, allowing me to address them.)

Design Elements

Three-Column Home Header

This is a convoluted, experimental, I-won’t-blame-you-if-you-call-it-dubious approach to a header that’s turned out to be…okay? (What?) To elucidate, column by column:

• Column 1: Navigation makes residence in C1, which, really, is an impractical position for navigation, because this situates it on the left side of the viewport, which may as well be mile away from the habitual cursor turf of a right-handed user. (Meaning: It’s a hassle to drag your mouse over there and give the menu use.) But I wanted to employ the underlined ADAM CAP “logo” (I use this term loosely) in the same position throughout the redesign (this is just the home header, remember; all other pages look different), and vertical nav makes efficient use the horizontal space afforded here. I get to include my beloved pixelated A icon in C1, too.
• Column 2: I desperately want to apprise users of new content, without making them scroll far (or at all), while providing them the ability to reference past content almost as effortlessly, and this is my solution. These three widgets show at-a-glance what’s new and allow old stuff to be seen/accessed by scrolling—no clicks necessary to become informed. This is one of the less intuitive aspects of the design. It’s rare to see overflow-y: scroll; elements (though overflow-x: scroll; is becoming commonplace with mobile devices having narrow screens). Even if the average user never discovers the scrollbars, the elements still serve their most crucial purpose (“Here lies activity!”).
• Column 3: I am not at the point yet where I have steady traffic, so it seems critical inform my few passersby whose lawn they’ve tromped on. My face has to be seen (blogs without a face are instantly forgettable [no sideways stares either; “Eye contact!”]) and I feel it’s wise to further cement myself with a goofy, succinct tagline. I’d prefer to include my newsletter signup than the current flat, insipid “hire me” pitch here (but I don’t have the newsletter’s raison d’être even remotely defined yet, and I do need $). This is the designated “call to action” spot, essentially. I’ll figure it out eventually.

This header functions better than anticipated, though it lacks focus. I was worried, in particular, that the C2 overflow-y elements be unusable on mobile, but they’re okay. (If something doesn’t work on mobile, then it doesn’t work at all; mobile users comprise an increasing percentage of the internet’s horde each month, and it’s imprudent not to tailor the web surfing experience to them.) Parts of the home header will inevitably be tweaked, but I’m at least not neurotically stressing out about needing to do so yet. (*grits his fucking teeth*)

Slanted, Canted, Offset, and Askew

This was a theme I incorporated sparingly (once) but prominently (in the header) in my last iteration of AdamCap.com. I brought transform: rotate(); over to SixPrizes for its 2017 redesign, and rotation pervades even more now. I considered myself brilliant and archetypal for incorporating canted elements then, but this appears to be a common design trend in 2019. I keep seeing it everywhere. Maybe it’s always been a trend and I’m just now realizing it. Regardless: Everyone else who’s canting their divs: Please stop. Give me this one opportunity to stick out and appear different and innovative for once. I mean it. (Thanks!)

I’ve not offset the positions of elements much in the past, but I made a deliberate effort to do so this time around. This technique helps add contrast, which makes individual elements more distinguishable and thus the site more navigable.

Anchors, Matey

I struggle with the decision to show (A) excerpts or (B) full content on archive pages. I prefer—usually—to see a full post if I hit the home page of a blog so that I don’t have to click (and then wait, again, for a page to load) to continue reading. Clicking is a decision, and work, and I don’t want to make decisions or do work. Please, take the wheel. Write well, and draw me in. Decide my fate for me. The less it takes to immerse a reader, the better.

However, when dealing with long-form content, which is what I tend to write, it’s a problem if the user encounters a topic they have zero interest in, and the entry is longer than a single viewport height. Scrolling past can feel like being stuck on a cyber treadmill, and the user will jump ship (leave my site) if they become overly disoriented or entangled. (Mayday! Mayday! Man overboard!) I lose my compass scrolling through the new AdamCap.com home page at times, and I am the sole author here. If anyone should be able to keep their bearings, it’s me. (An inauspicious sign this is, surely.)

My solution to this predicament was to add anchor links (these: ⇠ / ⇢) below post titles so that it’s possible to skip around, post by post, with infinitely higher velocity and precision. This is another unintuitive feature (even more so than the occult overflow-y above; I don’t know how anyone’s going to discover it), but the concept intrigues me and perhaps I’ll come up with a more effective implementation of it later.

Anchor links mesh cooly with my new M.O. because they (anchor links) provide instantaneous feedback. They’re fast. I really like the idea of loading a bunch of content (with a single page load) and letting a user zip through it all, in a deliberate way, and anchor links make that kind of interaction possible.

Sidebar Favs

What I am going for in the sidebar (to the right of posts) is to randomly display items from a curated list of my favorite things (you can buy on Amazon [to support me with scant affiliate commissions…]). What I’ve realized while typing this is that this idea (“favs!”) is boneheaded and unquestionably dubious because, even if I do see success with Amazon’s affiliate program, it places me at the mercy of Amazon. The big AZ. And that relationship has gone sour before. Amazon lowered their payout rates two years ago (in Mar 2017; my earnings dropped by over half the following month), and my Associates account was almost auto-terminated from the program the following year, out of the blue, erroneously. (Customer service resolved the glitch, but the incident certainly perturbed me.) It’s delusional to think I could come anywhere close to earning a stable, living income this way, and that has been my pie-in-the-sky hope here.

Instead, I should be promoting myself. I’m the commodity. And, from looking through past iterations of this website, it seems I’ve gotten away from doing that.

Past Designs

Nov ’09–Jan ’11

AdamCapriola.com (source)

This is the earliest capture of any of my web entities from the Wayback Machine. AdamCapriola.com served to share me (my personality and personal interests), essentially. I had started SixPrizes.com a few months earlier and thought it was important to have an outlet (to come across as a relatable, real person) if I was to make it online. The images are broken, but I was evidently into relaying what I was wearing each day. I evidently had a “Fan Page” as well. Who knew.

There’s not much to say about the design. I used a theme called Atahualpa because it was easy to customize, and I read somewhere that red is attention grabbing, so I made the titles red.

AdamCap.com (source)

AdamCap.com existed alongside AdamCapriola.com and contained content more rhetorical in nature. I think. (I am writing this ten years removed from the endeavor, and almost the entirety of it evades my memory.) The tagline reads “Thoughts on life, success, and human nature.” (Turns pale. [Dies.]) (Please ask Siri to dial 911 or shout for help if your eyes also roll clear into the back of your head and remain lodged there for 10+ seconds.)

Notably, I had a newsletter (no recall of what I spouted about—those archives were lost, tragically) and active comments sections, so I did some things right. But I should emphasize: the internet was different back then; this was a time of possibility for the little guy. The web had not become so big and centralized (and wearied and jaded) yet, and a small website like mine, with almost no substance but gumption, could attract a responsive audience.

Re: the design: The capture’s stylesheet is broken, but AdamCap.com was likely identical to AdamCapriola.com.

Jan ’11–Aug ’11

AdamCapriola.com (source)

I added a third column and switched to excerpts. This looks okay to me; the design is clean, if nothing else. Logo font: Helsinki.

Aug ’11–May ’13

AdamCap.com (AdamCapriola.com Absorbed) (source)

Above is what I have screen-captured in My Documents. Which looks great! It’s distinctive, at least, and exudes character. Opaque box-shadows still see use every now and then, most typically in retro-style designs. The red-bordered post titles are emphatic and I think serve well to draw the eye where it should be.

However, seen here is only a partial header. With the complete header, this design doesn’t look so hot:

The red–white–teal color scheme is a shade away from matching Aquafresh. That’s all I can think of when I look at this. ProTip: Toothpaste should not be evoked through web design. I was going for color contrast, but just no.

I could have done without the first row of the header; my name (Adam Capriola) was already above the fold (in the sidebar), and the recent tweet display (“GETTING GNAR OFF OVERLY-RIPE BANANAS #WASTEDDDDDDDDDDD – 3 DAYS AGO”), which feigned liveliness, was a cop-out for going long stretches without posting new content. (I should have been writing stuff for the blog instead of wasting breath [and brain cells] on social media.)

May ’13–Dec ’13

AdamCap.com (source)

This was a short-lived design that I never completed for unremembered reasons. I launched it half-finished and it stayed that way. (Meow.)

Dec ’13–Feb ’16

AdamCap.com (source)

I’m aghast that I let this design persist so long. It’s minimal to fault. It evinces none of my personality and is completely forgettable. Perhaps it speaks of my mental state through these years. The big feature here was the ability to sort by popular posts, which I doubt anyone did, except for me now and then to tug my own willy about how many views those popular posts had. Moving on…

Feb ’16–Jan ’19

AdamCap.com (source)

AC2016 was designed for 1024px-wide viewports and none others. This screenshots shows the design at native size. With a viewport any wider or narrower, you’d have to zoom to read properly, so most initial impressions of my site were probably poor. It was a total mistake to not address this. (By 2016, even I, the wannabe Luddite who held onto his flip phone forever, owned a mobile device and could appreciate mobile-friendly design.) What happened is that I put 100% of my focus into the desktop design and I was too drained by the end of this process to even take a crack at mobile, so I put it off. And I never got to it. (Truth be told, I was lazy and addicted to video games at the time. Call me feeble.)

However, the combination of Abril Display (for H1), Freight Sans Pro (for H2–H6), and Freight Text Pro (for body) does look sharp. My face and name are unavoidable. And a handful of visitors were so captivated to email me. So there were elements that fell into place effectively.

2019–?

AdamCap.com

I’ve delved into the unique aspects of this design already, but one more thought: Perhaps the biggest fault with the current design is the lack of “me” above the fold on mobile and outside the home page—my physiognomy should pervade. (Remember me!) I’ve tried to remedy this by inserting my headshot into the header, but including it anywhere up there throws balance off. (I’m fixed on maintaining the conspicuity of the ADAM CAP logo / post title area which leads downward into the content.) So I’m leaving my mug out until better inspiration strikes. Otherwise, the 2019 design is responsive and generally more engaging than previous iterations.

Takeaways / Future Plans

Publishing (for me) and reading (for you) have to be easy. That’s the overarching impetus behind AC2019. I’m attempting to construct a platform that tips me over and has me spilling my brains out into shark-infested waters.

However, I am a slow writer. It feels like I’m rollerblading up a steep hill naked every time I try to share anything on here. The sun is in my eyes, and people are watching. It is difficult for me to spill. Which means: The platform I step onto doesn’t matter at this point. Any of the above designs would suffice now. I need to write—wherever, however, to whomever, in whatever. It’s consistency that needs to be built up. I’m hoping that with repetition the writing process will become easier.

I’d envisioned having delineated sections within this redesign for specific content types, some of whose content I’d enter database-style, with optional commentary (i.e., writing), so that it would be simple for me to keep the site active. Fill in a few fields, and bango: new post! Ta-da! Read all about it! In practice, it’s too much, in the obverse sense of my publishing woes. I’ve coded cruft. I generate noise. The result is mechanical and flat. “Cut the chaff,” as my grandmother Myrtle used to say while indexing a Newport. All anyone is trying to do is communicate, and this is a conversation.