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A Document-centric Web

Entry created on 2024-11-01 (edited 2025-11-27) Authors: steeph (376) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Search Engines (1) Web Browsers (5) Web Sites (8) World Wide Web (10) Languages used: en (257) edit

I've been thinking about what exactly it is that is wrong with the WWW and what to do about it. It feels like it became worse over the years. It's easy to make out individual reasons: Walled gardens, ad-centric web sites, bad mass-generated and LLM-generated content at the top of all web searches, the lack of search results from small, personal web sites without an SEO budget or the malicious will to implement all the SEO tricks for the sake of it, egoistic algorithms (that push harmful and hateful content because it makes them feel good). Thinking about how these things became the way they are is sometimes interesting and may help by teaching a lesson. But it doesn't really bring us closer to a solution. I've had a few thoughts about what does, though. It's not as complicated as I make it sound here. It's just that I needed to think about it to be sure what I even want. And that is for the web to be made of documents with hyperlinks. If it is a text document, a searchable database, a set of image, a list of things, an article with pictures and audio samples, a video file that I can download and play, a tree of links to other documents or something similar to those, then it is something for the world wide web. If it is an application, it's not a document for the web. It's impossible to draw an exact line here. But that's the general rule for me now. It's not that web apps shouldn't exist. People make them and people like using them. So that's fine. But that's not what the web was made for and not what I personally want when browsing the web. It's one thing that photo editors, t-shirt designers, CAD software, action games and all those things exist. You can use them or not. But it has become so normal that web sites are huge and require JavaScript to even load that sites started being huge and require JS even though it's not necessary to serve their purpose. And that has become normal, too, by now. A page that in essence should be a simple document often is blown up do be a collection of applications in which

What can you do?

I've came to believe that there is no route to turning the web into the web that resembles my vision of a good web. It's not even just that I don't think that I (together with similar-mimded people) can't obtain the power to force the usage of certain software or to form habits in others. I don't think it would be a sustainable way with a lasting positive effect on the web. That doesn't mean that there aren't ways to bring others to use better alternatives to walled gardens, closed networks, sites with lots of ads and only 10 % content, sites that use dark patterns and search engines of the oligopositic type. You can promote small projects, share links to useful and interesting sites, talk about how you use the web, make it normal to use a search engine that doesn't only find bloated, commercial, SEO optimised sites. You can start your own projects, enrich the market with libre and other non-commercial software, submit pages to search engines with a curated index, create good content for alternative search engines to crawl. In this entry I'd like to talk about what I do to change my own experience of the web to the better, though, not about making the web better for everybody.

What I do for now

I needed to think about web things a lot before I realised how much of my own web experience I can change by making certain choices and how viable it can be to simply not use certain services. It's not a new idea to me. I don't do Windows, I use alternative front-ends to YouTube, I've used various unconventional operating systems on PCs and phones. But in regards to the web I thought that it's not that simple. Web sites are how they are and even nice web sites link to bloated pages with megabytes of unhelpful CSS and megabytes of maliscious JavaScript. If I use a browser that is fast and doesn't do JavaScript, my web experience is worse than it is with Firefox (I prefer LibreWolf, btw). Whenever I tried Dillo, Nersurf or something similar, or when I disabled JavaScript in Firefox, I didn't get along with at least some pages. It doesn't appear to be easy to simply decide to accept that some pages don't work and just go on to the next one. There surely are use cases where this is not acceptable. But for the usual uses - everyday browsing and casual research - that shouldn't be a problem considering I already accept that some pages aren't accessible because I don't want to register with them. In a sense it's my fault that I don't like how the web is today. It's me who keeps visiting web sites that are like that. And I can stop that by doing some simple changes: Disable JavaScript and use a search engine that prefers non-commercial web sites in its search results.

Really? That simple?

Don't get me wrong: I doesn't feel like an improvement to disable JavaScript entirely. There are browser extensions that let you control which pages are allowed to serve scripts and which scripts you want to execute. I've tried that, but it's complicated to get it right and frustrating because you always have to configure stuff while browsing and that never stops. But maybe it is an improvement despite not feeling like one at first. I mean, quitting to take drugs to which your brain has developed a strong chemical dependency also is often a worse experience than continuing to take them. But also often it's worth getting used to not taking them anymore. It also doesn't seem like an improvement to only use search engines with tiny indexes that rarely return with the ideal search result you hoped for. Maybe this isn't a viable choice. I think there is no search engine of that type with a large enough index to recommend it for daily use. Those projects just aren't there, yet. But that may just be one more reason to use and support them more. And since they do get rid of all the sites that do things that I don't like, it could be an improvement to get used to using them.

What does that mean in practice?

Some web sites don't have any images anymore, some web sites only load ads and recommendations, but not the actual article, modern closed-platform chat apps don't work, just as most other sites that can be called web apps, keyboard focus doesn't start at the main input field, some sites aren't readable because all their styles are missing, burrying the content between or under thousands of things that should have started out hidden or resized, on some sites certain links aren't working anymore, many audio and video players don't work because of attempts to prevent permanent file downloads and there are pretty much no ads. If you use a browser with a less than very popular rendering engine, add misaligned elements on many to almost all web sites, unreadable elements on some sites with unconventional styling and missing elements if they use unusual positioning options. If you only use a search engine that doesn't do commercial sites or whitelists desirable sites, add to that the feeling of trying out the web in 1995 unless you navigate to specific sites that you know contain what you are looking for. The web feels relatively small with a search engine like that. But even then it's huge. Maybe it's a quiestion of what you expect. If you really don't know what site you are looking for, use a universal search engine. If you have an idea where to find the information you are looking for, start at that site. It might be Wikipedia, Slashdot, Toms Hardware, an Invidious instance. The web is totally usable if you don't enter everything in the same search engine as a refrex. I thought it was great at a time where we didn't do that. And for the rest (missing content, non-working sites): Those tend to be the sites that I wanted to filter out in the first place. So the endeavour seems to work as intended.

There are also sites that I would like to read that just happen to use a CSS trick or JavaScript that isn't supported by all browsers. Those are sites that don't pay a lot of attention to accessability design guides but don't have any bad intentions. I've made sites like this myself before. This article is being posted to sites that fall in this category if you will. Feel free to contact makers of those sites to let them know that you would appreciate being able to read the pages. I know I should test a site in text browsers before publishing them. I never do. Nowadays I don't even test in any other browser than the main one that I'm using (except when using engine-specific style rules). We came to accept that it just looks the same in all browsers. That is something that web designers always wished for. And when Microsoft's browsers improved in this regard it felt like we were there. But it is also true that most users of the web use a browser with one of two/three engines (depends on where you make the cut and call it a new engine after a fork). I think it does still make sense to test a web site in different browser engines. It doesn't have to look great in a text browser (although that would be the best), but maybe Dillo and NetSurf. If you cover those two, you cover pretty much everybody and you don't even have to test the site in Firefox or Chromium.

So, what did I change? For work: Nothing. Corporate dictates what software I use for what. On my private laptop, I currently use NetSurf as my main web browser. I use LibreWolf for two purposes: Copying individual bookmarks or URLs from open tabs, and going to sites that don't work in NetSurf when I don't have the time to find an alternative solution. For chat apps I use their "native apps" although I suspect that they are all just the web apps shipped with their own browser. For social media I'm trying out different Mastodon/fediverse clients for Linux, which I wanted to do for a while anyway. For search I'm currently using various Searx/SearXNG instances. (I know, not that alternative. I don't want to ruin everything at once for me.) More than recently I deliberately navigate to a specific site instead of using a search engine and ending up on a site that I already knew. When looking for something on eBay, I don't find as many interesting things like before because the pictures are missing and I don't needlessly buy things as much now. When searching for some random information or doing some curiosity research I close many search results directly or very soom after opening them because they aren't displayed properly. So far that doesn't bother me much. I'm already used to having to close tabs again right away because of cookie banners and other popups that make it impossible to get to the content without finishing a maze and reading a bunch of things for at least a minute. Now I open and close more search results, but get my ansers anyway. On video platforms, I open the video in an external player. It's nicer to have the player of my choice with my prefered UI and my custom configuration anyway. Some sites simulaniously look worse and better at the same time. I may have to scroll a bit to the content and it is obvious that the page wasn't designed to look exactly like that. But at least I don't get any grafical animations, lots of side-loaded unrelated content or ads. For shopping my options are very narrow. I already stopped using Amazon for other reasons a while ago. It's really not as much of a hassle as people seem to think. But much more shops than I expected rely on JavaScript for purchasing or logging in nowadays. (Probably at least for a CAPTHA.) It's pretty much all, actually. According to my rule from earlier, those are apps though, and there would be better ways to implement those. So, I don't have a solution other than switching back to LibreWolf or an app on my phone when I need to buy something online. So far, I didn't actually need anything, though. For online banking, sending a message to my insurance, using the Wayback machine and I predict much more, it is the same. For some things I will try to find alternatives. For others I will realise I don't have to. For some sites that I want to consume for enternainment it's disappointing when they don't work. There are so many alternaives for entertainment in all categories. I have so many ebooks, web books, audio books, lecture recordings, podcasts, … that I would like to consume when I get the time and energy to, I really don't need whatever interesting thing I've just found or somebody has just recommended. But now that I know it's there, I don't want to miss out. So far, this has been largest part of my negative experience after switching. But I haven't been at it for long. I'm curious to see how this will go for me.

Edited in November 2025 (one year later) to add: This endeaver has not worked out for long. More and more I switched bach to LibreWolf and more and more I felt I had to use a site without wanting to look for alternatives. I also completely gave up using alternative search engines and when I started using a new PC I didn't even install any other browser than LibreWolf. I made several attempts at getting used at some of the aspects of a less complex and less commercial web experience. But it didn't stick, for the reasons you may have expected and not done the same experiment yourself. But there will be more attempts from me to get used to search engines with less commercial results. And I did get used to some things. Apart from exclusively using alternative Youube frontends and sometimes trying small search engines first, I more often in the past visit blogs, aggregators or web directories for browsing instead of social media feeds. And that is a great thing to get used to, I think.

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Mice I Use For Everyday Things

Entry created on 2025-11-21 Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Computers (22) Hardware (16) Mouse (4) Languages used: en (257) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'The Best Computer Mouse I Found'.

I've written about my high standards of demands of a computer mouse before. But those posts have pretty much only talked about what I'm _not_ using and why. In absence of good mice, this is what I am using as pointing devices.

On laptops while travelling: Integrated touch pad or touch screen. This has nothing in common with my dream mouse. But it's there, doesn't need connecting, packing, extra batteries or space on a way too small hotel room table.

Anker A7852M. It's a vertical mouse. I use it mainly for work, for changing my hand position every now and then. It's annoying, falls over multiple times a day and doesn't really help with carpal tunnel syndrom. But it feels very nice.

Vaxee XE-S Wireless. This is a "pro gaming mouse". I'm testing it to see what you get for hundrets of Euros. I was so stupid to go for the S variant because the regular size wasn't available as wireless version. I thought being wireless would be more important than fitting my hand. It's probably not. But it's not smaller than other mice, so whatever. I'm not a gamer. So maybe I can't judge this mouse's qualities properly. But I can judge how well it fulfills the features I'm looking for in a mouse. And it's not all that good. It's reliable in scrolling and clicking. But so is every 20 € mouse when it's new. The plastic case doesn't feel better than a cheap mouse's. The paint rubs off in one spot after only a few months. The clicks sound different and are harder and softer for different mice of the same model, which makes me think the switches aren't really of such high quality. I had to clean them once to make the left one work reliably again. The scrolling wheel pretty good grip actually, but it is very soft, which I dislike. The cable is a good flexible rubber one. So using it with cable isn't a problem. But it's not as good as Razor ones. It's too small and light, I'm probably going to mod it at some point.

Logitech M-S69. My favourite mouse and the one I use most is a classical cheap Logitech ball mouse. The highpoint of standard OEM no-nonsense mice from the late 1990s. The beginning of "two buttons and a wheel but the wheel is actually the third button as well". It was labeled with all sorts of computer manufacturer names and included with ne PCs around and after the millenium change. Mine is branded Fujitsu Siemens. But that doesn't matter. What I like about is the high quality of switches compared to today's mice, the clear tactile (and audible) click when turning the scroll wheel and the slim body. If a mouse has to be too small for my hands, at least I want to be able to move it around with two fingers instead of by resting my hand on it. I think I would prefer the same mouse but with an optical sensor. But the ball isn't a problem, either. Back in the day I used to hate having to clean the mouse so often of deal with it not moving where I want to point. But with the right pad (gray cardboard) it works as well as an oprtical mouse from that time, which is as good as it ever has to.

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I took pictures of fog.

Entry created on 2025-11-20 Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Fields (1) Fog (1) Photos (29) Pictures (61) Wind Turbine (1) edit

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SBWG 0.13

Entry created on 2025-11-10 (edited 2025-11-18) Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Bash (31) Code (31) Computer (78) Linux (36) Projects (41) SBWG (18) Scripts (28) Software (53) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Projects → Code → Bash Scripts → SBWG (16) edit

Wow, has it been more than a year again without publishing a new SBWG version? Another year where I didn't have much energy for things besides work. But I finally worked on it again. It's still evolving a lot. But the list of things I still want to do is slowly becoming shorter.

SBWG 0.13.0 is a pretty stable version again. I've tested it with several sites for a while and I'm now also using it to generate this web site. You can get it from there.

Apart from the almost permanently ongoing task of cleaning up the code formatting line by line because I started out with a mess of tabs and spaces mixed in different circumstances, I find the following changes worth describing here.

File attachments: Image files are now only embedded as a thumbnail and displayed as a gallery if the file type is one of the following: image/avif, image/bmp, image/gif, image/heic, image/jp2, image/jpeg, image/jpm, image/jpx, image/jxr, image/png, image/svg+xml, image/tiff, image/vnd.microsoft.icon, image/webp or image/x-jp2-codestream. Even though not all of them are supported by most web browsers and there are browsers that support formats not on the list, those are the image types that I find widely supported enough to try to display their contents instead of only linking to the original files. If a file attachment is in a subdirectory, the same sub-path is now used on the generated web site, allowing for several files of the same name to be attached to different entries. That is something that is now possible because file attachment now not necessarily need to be named after the entry they are attached to. Their file name does not matter if the directory they are in is named after the entry. For axample: ENTRYNAME, ENTRYNAME-files or ENTRYNAME-images

Since SBWG sometimes changes how certain features work, it is possible (as in thinkable. It's not like SBWG is used by so many sites that there has been an actual example of it.) that a web site created for one version of SBWG is not generating as expected with a newer version of the script. That is why it is now possible to declare in a site's settings file that it may not be generated by a SBWG script newer than a certain version. If your site uses hooks it may be a good idea to use this new feature so that you get a message when trying to use a wrong version of SBWG instead of noticing after a possibly long generation process that everything does not look right. To activate this restriction, simply add a < sign followed by the latest version allowed to the first line of the site's settings file. For example: #SBWG <0.13.0

Accessibility as an afterthought: For some reason I did many things wrong from the start when it comes to accessibility. I've always felt that design decisions are and should be subject to my personality and mood. This is why SBWG is only written for Bash (so far) and so many specialty features are the way they are. I guess I've let this policy spill out on decisions like how readable generated sites are. I've never been good with designing web pages entirely on my own. I'm better at implementing CSS than at design decisions. But this goes so far that I've created an image gallery feature (for image file attachments) with modal preview without using any JavaScript. To realise that I had to break some HTML rules and create HTML that is not viewable without a basic minimum of styling (to hide some elements). I am very very slowly drifting off that course of not caring about things like that. As a start, I've changed the layout of web sites generated with SBWG to contain their menu after the content. For a styled site there's no difference (e.g. using the default "elth" style). But in text browsers (and hopefully also screen readers) this means the entire menu with all topics and the whole tagcloud isn't displayed/read before getting to the actual content of a page. To make it easy to access the menu, there is now a "Jump to the menu" link at the top of every page. Another improvement in this regard is inclusion of image descriptions as alt attributes where descriptions are found in the meta information embedded in the image files. SBWG now looks for all sorts of tags that might hold a useful description of an image, or at least a title or keywords. Fields meant for image descriptions are preferred over others that probably only hold inferior information. This should in some cases already generate useful alt attributes. But I know that I'm going to have to actually write those image descriptions for images used on my site. It's a start. Like I said. I'm moving very very slowly on this.

Style set handling: The most recent large change has been the rewrite of everything related to fetching and embedding style sets. I made some minor compromises but simplified some parts a lot. Changes emerging from the re-write include: Style sets can be placed in different directories now. SBWG looks for the requested style sets in the web site's own styles directory as before. If it isn't there, it continues looking in the user's home directory (`~/.local/share/sbwg/styles/`), then in a global styles directory (`/usr/local/share/sbwg/styles/`), then in the styles directory relative to the script file (in case SBWG is used as a portable directory, not installed). This way styles can be provided globally, e.g. with an install script, additional or altered styles can be installed by a user for their own sites and additional or altered styles again can be limited to a single web site. And lastly a stylesheet file can be chosen by path no matter where it's localed. But this file will be its own style set. Special use case, I know. But if you happen to have a use for that feature, there you go. Style files named reset.css are no longer treated specially. It wasn't a requested feature and I never used it myself. If you use alternate styles on your site (which is unlikely enough) and there are style definitions you want to be included in all style sets, simply include them in all style sets. If you want to refrain from using redundant CSS, put that code in a separate file like before with reset.css) and create links for each style set. The result will be same as before but more self explanatory. When using alternate styles on a web site (so the user can select from them in the browser), all non-styling files from all style sets are now being used. Again this is more in line with what you would expect. Although I might change this again later because the way it used to be was more practical. There were good reasons for it. The basic minimum of styling that should be applied to a site generated by SBWG is now hardcoded. If no style whatsoever is requested, a file with those minimal rules is generated and linked on generated HTML files.

Other than that it's mostly code improvements, HTML cleanliness improvements, formatting improvements and UI/style improvements of a tiny nature. But I'm glad I have two of the larger todos - attachment changes and the style rewrite - (almost) done.

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Old Cherry Keyboard Repair

Entry created on 2025-09-14 (edited 2025-11-17) Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Computers (22) Electronics (16) Keyboards (10) Vintage Computing (2) edit

I found a Cherry G81-1000 in the scrap recently. It's one of those old 101 key models with a metal board and oldish mechanical switched. Model M fans would probably disagree. But it is comparible with an IBM Model M in many ways. Maybe it's becasue Model Ms are still produced that, from what I saw, Cherry G81-1000s are offered for more on eBay. So they do seem to be of interest to other vintage computer fans, not just me.

To test it I first had to replace the cable. I decided for a cheap, black audio cable with two 5-pin DIN plugs. I say audio cable because hat's what it was advertised as. It has no shielding at all. Anyway, just becausew they used proper shielding back then doesn't mean I need it. Because I'm not involved with the computer keyboard fan bubble I had no idea where to find the pinout on ther PCB. Web search engines were of no help. But since a stub of the original cable was still on it, I knew which colour of the original cable goes where. I then checkerd three other (a bit newer) Cherry keybards and found them to use the same colours. I tried the same pinout and it works. I'll attach a diagram just in case anybody needs to do the same thing.

The keybnoard is generally working. But typing does not feel nice and some keys stopped working after a while. From their arrangement it is pretty obvious that one trace on the board must be broken. Here starts the bigger problem. Because of the way the board is constructed, the most of the traces aren't accessible. They are covered by a metal shet from the back and the switches from the front, which are connected to the metal sheet. I know how to repair traces of a keyboard matrix on such a flexible PCB. But if I can't reach them without destroying either be PCB or the switches, that knowledge is not worth anything.

During my research on those old boards I also found out why the switches look so different from MX switches and why they feel so weird. They aren't really mechanical switches, but rather Cherry MY switches, which use indivisual membranes inside. This explains why typing on it feels so bad. I did not find a way to repait the trace, yet. But knowing now that nor cleaning nor using the switches for a while will make them feel better, it does not feel worth putting more time into this.

I initially thought it might be a good idea to design a PCB with a key matrix that replaces the original switch PCB. The new one could be populated with MX switches and thus the entire device updated to an excellent version of itself. But there are free open source PCB designs out there that replace the entire inside of the keyboard. That would be the easier route. And it would upgrade the keyboard to USB at the same time. Although the Atmega used in those could probably be programmed to use a simpler serial interface as well.

It would be nice to continuie here with "So I ordered one of those, done up the keyboard and it's now my favourite one." But I have enough unfinished and unstarted projects already. So no, not right now.

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Mr. Robot

Entry created on 2025-10-1 (edited 2025-10-20) Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Child Abuse (4) Delusion (1) Economics (1) Fight Club (1) Films (22) Hacking (1) Mental Health (2) Psychopathy (1) Schizophrenia (1) Split Personality (1) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Films (15) edit

I must admit I enjoyed watching Mr. Robot. I don't know exactly why I think that it is something that Ihave to admit to. Maybe because I suspect that there are plenty of critical reviews and opinions on it out there. I didn't check. I'm writing this without looking up what others think about it, what fans of it talk about and what connections and references I didn't get.

Mr. Robot is a series of 45 ~45 minute episodes in four seasons. The first one was released in 2015. It's about mental illnesses and neurodivercity, coorporate and world politics, hacking and the a world conspiracy.

Season 1

The first season has a lot of similarities with the book and movie Fight Club. I go so far to say it is a reinterpretation/rewrite of the Fight Club story but with a continuation. It is that heavily inspired by the story and the movie's unique narrative style. Watching it for the first time was as gripping and exciting as watching Fight Club for the first time. Some story elements from Fight Club are not in it but additional parts of the story make for a little bit more complex story. Watching it for the second time years later was like watching Fight Club for the second time: Highly entertaining and I knew the story so I could pay attention to more details. The main story element it has compared to Fight Club is all the hacking. A typical American action movie take on social engineering, IT security and vulnarability exploitation _but_ with the surprising feature of being realistic and not embarrassing. There's always enough being shown and explained to let the viewer know that Sam Esmail knew what he was writing about. Yes, maybe it's not realisitic in the way conversations always contain the right amount of keywords and explanations to enable a bystander (the viewer) to easily look up more information. Yes, the main character seems to have a memory, knowledge and hacking skills ptobably not many on this planet have and he is quick suspiciously quick in gaining access or information he requires at any point of the story. But it is way better than in almost any other movie while containing way more hacks and related jargon than almost any other movie and it is being acknowledged by the narrator that some things take more time than he is given.

Season 2

Season two contiunes the story to a great extend. The narrative style is refined to its own Mr. Robot way of talking to the viewer in different ways and tones through different characters or personalities. One character seems to have changed a bit as decisions were made to take the story into a certain direction. It is a worthy continuation, stays true to the character and, as I know now, prepares the story for more than the viewer would expect, without leaving gaps to fill or unknowns to answer by what's going to happen in futures seasons, with is also an achievement. In the second season the first hints to an upcoming shift in the story are placed. At that point they only cause confusion or create questions, which is very much in the spirit of the rest of the show so far.

Season 3

There is a lot in Season three to make you find yourself in a completely different place at the end and not recognise what was important in the first two seasons. That is how fast the story develops. It all makes sense though. Well, it's fiction, but it's consistent and logical. Even though the character of the show doesn't change during the season, there is technically a change of genre in season three. The viewer might not be aware of it, yet, or might not realise what certain statements mean, but the shift from hacking drama to science fiction has begun.

Season 4

Season four feels a bit different with several new characters and several old characters, whose stories had already finished, coming back with new stories. Sex and violence are upped for the last season. Hacking scenes do not occur as often.. The show becomes more like other American crime thrillers. But it does still feel like Mr. Robot. That is not the shift in genre I meant that makes this season special. I call it science fiction. Somebody else calls it paranormal. The project that, through connections with all substories of the show, caused everything that happened in season two and later, is very slowly being reveiled to the viewer. Not to spoil too much, just in case. But then everything turns out to be otherwise again, which is exactly the way you could have ecpected after knowing what you know about Elliot, and the last episode resembles an homage to Mr. Nobody more than one to Fight Club.

Camera Angles

The unusual camera angles that often introduce a new scene or change in scenery deserve a shout-out. I don't know how how this works in film, who decides on these shots. But whoever is responsible should be proud of them. They often highlight shapes or peaces of architecture by placing the camera vewry close to them, leaving only little space in the frame for the actual to take place in. But because those close objects and shapes are out of focus and not moving, you naturally view the small part of the frame where people are having a conversation. One scene dtarts by showing just a grey wall with a grey rubber knub, Then a door opens from out of frame and a women steps in. We don't see her face, but can recognise her from her coat and the long hair that reaches into the frame. She steps around something that is also no in frame, then sits on it. (It was a chair.) Now her face is placed perfectly in the frame in profile. Then after a seconds it cuts to the other person sitting at the other side of the table. We knew the roomm, who's in there and who's about to enter it. That makes the interesting composition all the more estimable. (I've never heard the word estimable. But dict.cc says it's a good fit. Whatever.)

Music

This is the first time I feel that way. But this sound track must be worth listening to on its own on any day. More than a few times a scene started with a song that fades into the background as the scene starts to have other sounds to be heard, like a conversation, and I wanted to continue to listen to the song. I'll have to check out some of those songs.

Transgender Character

By mentioning it here I might be breaking this excellent handling of the matter of a transgender character in the show being embedded in the story without ever mentioning it or making it the topic of any scene. But considering how bad the topic was handled in TV shows over the last decades, it is worth mentioning how matter-of-factly this subsidiary matter is included. She is shown presenting herself as a male and as a female in different contexts. And the first times she is referenced she is attributed the pronoun he simply because she is part of an anonymous hacker personality and people tend to assume they are male. As people learn more about her more and more people start to use "she". In a way the show includes her transition in the eyes of, well, not the public, exactly, but a the group of people we follow throughout the show.

Overall

I praise this show for various different things. Among it: Unique characters, good to very good actors (including a strong crying scene), a non-judgemental depiction of mental illness, a realistic amount of sex and romance for a story not about romance or sex (at least until the last season), recreating and adding to the cinematic style and story of Fight Club and more. The main thing for which I like the show though is its unique approach of using a coporate director's fraudulent decision, various mental health challanges of more than one character, a family drama, a disruptive revolution/economic crash, world politics, a worldwide conspiracy tale and lots of IT security substories to very elaborately introduce a science-fiction plot that in itself wouldn't have been new or very exciting/entertaining for long. That is what I like to see in it. What it is affter all and most of all is a portrait of a mentally ill IT security worker and his issues. A real review of the show should contain a lot of sentences about the dillusions, illusions, different personalities, drug habit, coping strategies, challenges, memory gaps and mental blanks of Elliot. I feel like many of these things are portrayed in a way one with similar problem could relate to. The topic of mental illness is certainly portrayed in a way I havent seen before. But I don't know enough to analise those aspects of the series.

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Film: Baby Invasion

Entry created on 2025-09-24 Authors: steeph (376) Categories: AI Art (1) Art (2) Films (22) Gaming (1) Murder (1) Video Games (4) Violence (1) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Films (15) edit

How do I pick the movies I write about here? I never thought about it but I think it's when 1) I have something to say after watching it and 2) I still have to get it out when I find the time and energy to write it down. It's this or I want to share or recommend a film. This is not a case of the latter. I don't think anybody has to watch that movie, which is why I was thinking about why I want to write about it. Anyway, I don't have to be able to explain why. I just have to accept that of all the films I had something to say about, it's this weird one I find myself acually writing about. Maybe I should write more often about movies to balance this one out with more positive things.

Baby Invasion is the latest film by Harmony Korine. I found some of his earlier films intriguing. Some just didn't give me anything. Some made me think. Some entertained me. He has done some things in his films that feel unique, experimental and new. Artsy, but in a way that I feel is not 100 % over my head. Art that I can get something out of. This is why I watched the new one. I can't say I was disappointed because I didn't know what to expect from it. I just knew it wouldn't be how I would expect a film with the same storyline to be if somebody else had written and directed it. But I can't say I like the film either.

What is it about? I'm asking because I don't really know for sure. It's about a video game that was made with the goal of blend reality and the game. Supposedly a trend formed online of people living out the narrative of the game by raiding rich people's mansions and killing everybody inside. The film consists of such a live stream, whereas the viewer is not informet whether it is a live stream of a game, an out-of-game raid or whether there is a difference between the two. I think it is at least implied that what we are seeing is not in game, but an actual raid. But that opens the question of why there are visual effects and game overlays then.

I don't dislike it. But I didn't enjoy watching it. It is a strain on my patience. I skipped some bits the first time because nothing (new) was happening. And I still didn't finish it in one day. After I finished it I made sure I didn't miss anything from skipping the most boring bits. Maybe it's not boring to people who watch video game streams or their recordings. I can't say.

The overall visual impression, especially the visual effects, which are plentiful and obtrusively extensive, look out of place and purposless. They remind of an 1980s art clip by somebody who just found access to video effects and filters and wants to use them all, but with modern AI effects. It is these effects and the constant trance music from some generic trance playlist that create the overall feeling of the film. The content feels second nature. Maybe it was intentional to create more of a distance between the actions of the "players" and the viewer's emotions than a movie already has. Throughout the movie video game-like overlays appear, often without an obvious reason or purpose. A chat/shout box accomponies the 90 minute long live stream. Like the colour changes and other visual effects the overlays become more over time. If it wouldn't have been for all the blinking and first person shooter-like camera movement, the violent content would have been the only thing preventing me from letting the music and colours suck me into a light meditative state. I think it was mostly the violence (repeated murder) and blood that deterred me.

The visual effects shouldn't have surprised me. Harmony Korine used some of them in AGGRO DR1FT, his previous film. But I hadn't seen this before I've watched Baby Invasion. With either of those films I think he has crossed the line of artsy films into a genre I call "I guess it must be art", which I use for films where it really isn't clear to me what they are trying to do, what they are saying, whether there is a story that's being told or what I can take away from watching them. Of course I could try and analyse anything and I would find something to read into this or that and I would find something for me to think about. And that's often all that art is to me or has to be. But I don't feel like I'm part of the target audience of such works and posting even a little bit about what the film is for me has the potential to become embarrassing because I didn't really understand anything and therefore might have missed some connections or messages that are very important to the film.

But here is my take anyway. Is it a video game/shooter critique à la eXistenZ (1999)? I think yes but more. It doesn't tell a story to entertain the viewer. It shows the game/crimes in real time for the viewer to react to but with enough visual and auditory game effects to make any interpretation of how "real" the shown actions are valid. It poses some questions more directly than eXistenZ does: How real are these actions (and customs and habits) to the brain of the player? What of the conventions applied in game break their way through to other parts of the players life? How much of the experiences stays after the game session? I don't know anything about the motivations of Harmonie Korine to create this film. But I do read it as game-skeptic take on shooters like eXistenZ. I compare it with that film because it also seems to ignorantly ask those quartions as if there are no solid answers about them. Yes, it is a controversial debate. But even though it is usually not a fact-based one, there are more than a few scientific papers on the topic now, and have been for 15 years. It is paying tribute to a bogus debate, which doesn't have any value to me. But that's just what I've read into it. When you take the same questions and apply them to a gamers everday life, on a smaller frame, they seem much more valid to me. But that is something I don't have any personal experience with or interest in.

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The Best Computer Mouse I Found

Entry created on 2025-09-13 Authors: steeph (376) Categories: Computers (22) Hardware (16) Mouse (4) Languages used: en (257) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'My Dream Computer Mouse'.

I've written about my unreasonable feature wish list for a computer mouse before. This post is about the best mouse that I found to buy according to my standards

To name it right away, it's a Razor Viper. The buttons and the wheel do not have the quality I was used to during the 2000s from using cheap Logitech and generic OEM mice. But they did survive my house being a dusty building site for a long while, which isn't true of most other mice's switches. The left and right buttons work as reliably as I could hope for. The middle one needed some cleaning and still isn't as good as in the beginning. I have to press it harder than I'd like. The wheel turns very easily with a slight and almost silent step. That is much softer that I'd like it to be. Other than those of cheaper mice it does still work reliably. The coating of the wheel has long gone. So it's unusable with greacy fingers. But those of cheaper mice are all the same and mice with better rubber tyres from Razor aren't available anymore, it appears. The Viper (Ultimate, 8kHz or newer version, not the Mini) is slightly on the bigger side. It's simple and usual design makes grabbing it and moving it quickly reliably easy. But it is not quite as big as I would wish for. Its cable has a synthetic textile sheath and is very flexible. The best mouse cable I've ever had. There is a wireless version, too. My variant doesn't have the side buttons. While it looks like they are there, they can't be pressed and there are no switches. So I can't accidentally navigate back and forth like with other mice. After two years of not opening it, a surprising amount of dirt entered the case. Beside the mentioned problem with pressing the middle button (wheel) this doesn't seem to be a problem though. There seems to be two wholes below the big buttons where the more gunky dirt collects and drips down beside the switches.

Modifications

Since it comes with LEDs inside (for a glowing Razor logo on the back) I had to take care of those. There is a GUI configuration tool for Windows and a very basic open source CLI tool for Linux systems. The latter can't be installed easily on all distros though. Since I wanted them to be off all the time anyway, I just unplugged them. They are conveniently placed on their own, separate PCBs, connected to the rest of the electronics with cables. So they can easily be removed or unplugged. While I had it open, I've added steel weights by glueing in isolated screws. You could add a bit more weight by creating the right shape of metal parts. But this was sufficiant for me. On the bottom plate replaced the small and very thin rubber feet with way thicker felt ones. The new ones also collect dirt like crazy. But they can take a lot more of it and don't make the mouse wiggle from it.

This is far from my ideas mouse. But it is one that can be bought right now. At ~60 € it's not even that pricey compared to what's out there. In my next post about I will write about the mouse that I'm actually using that can't be bought anymore.

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