Notices by Sara Joy :happy_pepper: (sarajw@front-end.social)

@skinnylatte guy sounds like people have given him some trouble when it wasn't "their" laksa

Spent some time walking through an electronics store today, and Oof.

I can't imagine any more, having to select these devices physically, comparing via those little notelets next to each thing.

Every phone, TV, vacuum cleaner, coffee machine, laptop - each looks largely the same as its brethren.

"That the Nazis were our enemies: My God, please, we didn't need Hitler's seizure of power to know that. That had already been completely evident for at least four years to every person who wasn't feeble-minded. (...)

Our personal problem wasn't about something our enemies were doing, but what our friends did," said Hannah Arendt in 1964.

https://mastodon.social/@peterjelinek/113810025878981325

@paninid the people who talk about virtue signalling seem to be mostly angry that they are feeling some kind of emotion (guilt maybe?) for not having whatever virtue they feel is being signalled.

It's been a few days since the wise men were supposed to have come by via a star, so it's probably time to take it down. The tree came down today too.

I do like having a glowy light in our attic (my home office) window though, so have decided to swap it out for a paper craft heart.

Home is where the heart is, after all 💜

@heydon @joachim dungarees and boilersuits are great until you need the toilet and have to get cold.

Oh wait no, that may not apply to men...

To avoid having to pick pictures myself and generate a bunch of hot water and probably CO2 to find some good/bad ones:

Does anyone have some examples of terrible AI generated alt text for images, that would otherwise be much better and more easily described by humans?

Can you.. just generate sounds on the web?

Like, sine wave (or sawtooth or even some kind of function to define wave shape), frequency 1000Hz, a given duration, maybe a function for volume (ease-in-out hah)?

I don't want an online generator - I have an app. I don't want to download .wav files.

Just like you can avoid video clips or GIFs by animating with CSS, it would be cool to be able to generate blips and boops with code.

Hm!

@MoritzGlantz ooOOooo nice

@joachim @fonts there's an idea I've seen cropping up lately of "male flight" - which feels relevant to this - probably because kottke shared it recently: https://kottke.org/25/01/0045954-male-college-enrollment-c

Design maybe got too woman-y, the men flew out into UX. Then that has got too woman-y, and now people are starting to ring the death knells for that: https://trends.uxdesign.cc/

@joachim @fonts yes you've eloquently put much of what I was thinking - everyone has an opinion and lots of people think they could just "do design" (they often can't, but they still have opinions when designs are placed in front of them) - but if the design choices are backed up by all this laborious process, they can't really argue any more.

@fonts are UX and design becoming, or did they become the same thing? Are they the same? Should they be?

Please assume I'm ignorant, not that I'm asking probing questions.

Part of the problem I feel is that everyone, because everyone interacts directly with the design, feels like they have a stake in it, have ideas about how it should be, has an *opinion*.

@timbray @DavidDarnes there already are design engineers in industry working in design for manufacture and with CAD etc - so it's not an unknown term :)

The question to me is whether it can also be applied to software, i.e. UI, design systems, etc. I'm warming to the idea...

Where did I pick up this sticker? Anyone know who made it?

This assertion is what I'm taking along with me through 2025.

There *is* hope.

I'm enjoying all these roundups of 2024.

I wish I had the mental capacity to remember the stuff I would totally want to write into such a thing! My brain really needed this period of hibernation, it has just gone flop.

I hope she'll be back to being more active again by the 6th of January!

What I can say though is THANK YOU to everyone I've interacted with in 2024, online, in person, or via pure vibes. I've felt socially somewhat replenished this year 💜

At that weird spot where 2024 already feels like it was last year, but 2025 feels super futuristic still

My company's customer experience department has a "spicy to nicey" reward system for colleagues who have managed to turn an initially really negative interaction into one where the customer goes away happy.

Wish that other companies I end up in customer support with also did this!

Bill Watterson knew what was up.

#CalvinAndHobbes

So the HTML Review has some beautiful and interesting sites to explore and play with:

https://thehtml.review/03/ (there's a /02/ and /01/ too!)

But how accessible are they? I don't want to shame anyone, and I haven't yet visited them with a screen-reader on, myself.

I'd be interested to know about people's experiences visiting these or other arty, experience-based websites while using assistive tech. If any have been a particular joy, please reply with links!

#accessibility #art #html #web

PS. It's not all about screen readers of course. Any assistive tech. Or just exploration without using a pointing device. Any replies welcome :)