vanderwal.net

Webmention Receipt Fixed?

Somewhere in the past month the site’s ability to receive webmentions became a little faulty. I think this may have been resolved. A little more than 10 years ago I started setting up the ability to receive a Webmention - IndieWeb, but it wasn’t completed properly. In the last year I set up Webmention.io and it has been working until about a month ago. Part of the old attempt with the Heroku app approach (which occasionally worked) was still in place. I pulled that out today. I tested with my Micro.blog site and it finally went through, which was a good sign. I had been able to get a webmention through Webmention Rocks!, but that seemed to be the only source able to generate it properly (this site also has a great lest of tests it runs with great output for understanding various).

Over the weekend I also took the step to authenticate things through IndieKey to authenticate many IndieWeb related services. Your site is your identity, through a set of validations.

While my site can receive a webmention (think of them as comments or end points to send a like) they are not displayed on the site. The webmention gets received through RSS that I pull. At some point I may setup the ability to post webmentions on my side, so I’m not using my micro.blog to handle those. But, that day is not today.

A Stunning Video on Design and Porcelain Watch Face Creation

As I was wrapping things up last night and I had calm travel videos on for ambient background, YouTube offered up something different that I found amazing on many levels.

The video was from the watch brand anOrdain (anOrdain from Glasgow’s Southside), which I had not heard of, but that isn’t a surprise as I’m not a big “watch guy”. I’ve had a few decent watches, my dad’s Rolex when he passed and that was 99% sentimental. And Apple Watch which is largely utilitarian, but designed well.

The anOrdain video was on their YouTube channel and focussed solely on their Model 1 Porcelain watch and the design, craftsmanship, and the process. I found the video incredibly well produced and the story of their process to make the porcelain face, the typography, and the hands. It is a highly designed and crafted watch and the video matches that really well.

The Blue on White Porcelain Video

The video Blue On White | The Model 1 Porcelain - YouTube - anOrdain color hues, pacing, focus on details is a wonderful bit of video craft on its own. But, it matches the watch maker’s esthetic and practice so very well. I’ve watched a couple other videos and they have the same craft and design forward esthetic and feel.

What I Fell For

I don’t know that I’ve really fallen for a watch. I have for things really well designed and crafted, but watches rarely fit that bill as many tilt toward flashy and gaudy not elegant. What struck me with the watch is the face with the white porcelain and the incredible blue that is a Delft Blue. It somewhat reminds me of the Elizabeth Tower Clock / Big Ben - Wikipedia after it had been refurbished and the decades of dirt and grime removed and the hands and markings were blue (Big Ben Elizabeth Tower London 2023 01 Detail - Big Ben - Wikipedia). This combination resonates really well with me and it is calming and beautiful in a way most watch faces aren’t.

That wonderful white and blue combination is often really striking to me. On the anOrdain watch, The Model 1 Porcelain, it is matched with the details of the face with the curved blue rectangle markings, the custom typeface by Kia Tasbihgou (Design Practice of Kia Tasbihgou and Kiatas on Instagram and article about his typeface designs A campaigner for the unconventional, Kia Tasbihgou discusses his latest typefaces ), which is classical and playfully exaggerated like a hand drawn set of numbers. The hands on the watch are distinct and unique from each other, and are a blue from heated steel, which are a different hue and shade, but rhymes really well.

This is well outside my budget. It looks very much like an art piece crafted for one’s wrist.

Modernized Page Structure for the Model of Attraction Draft from March 2002

I’ve been looking at filling in the gaps around the Personal InfoCloud and setting the foundation for it in the four InfoClouds in an Overview of the InfoClouds, but pointing back to a quick framing of the Model of Attraction, mostly leans to the original draft (and only a first draft) of the Model of Attraction - First Draft :: vanderwal.net that I wrote on a flight back home from Austin when the idea hit.

Looking at that page, the page was still in a 2002 or 2003 layout and design, which is quite similar to what it is today, but the text was much smaller and the page much narrower.

Update of the Layout Structure

I updated the layout structure of the page and the HTML framework of the page and used the current CSS that does much of the layout work (then and now). I also fixed a few typos and corrected the date at the top, which was a year off as stated elsewhere, as March 2002 is the correct date.

I Haven’t Read Through This In a Long While

As I was resetting the scaffolding of the page I realized it has been a long time since I have read this in full, and I need to set aside time to do that. There are quite a few things I wrote out fully in the rough draft and in the outlined sections at the end, which set the foundations for much that was to follow. But, it goes much farther in a broad sense pulling things in and building bridges to uses of the model within different domains that people work in. The initial piece also calls out the initial rough use of info cloud in my quote:

“Users have a rough cloud of information following them that has a magnetic attraction toward them and their interests.”

I had forgotten about that. It had been captured by someone I was talking with as the idea was gelling and I used it a couple of times and realized it had gravity. This became the hook for InfoCloud.

A Quick Gem of Jungle Concert in the Paris Metro

I stumbled onto the the Jungle concert in the Paris Metro - arte.tv late this afternoon after a meeting and have it running in the background in Vision Pro, while I’m in the Mac Virtual Display pulling together many loose ends. Rain in the background is a perfect addition.

I’ve enjoyed Jungle / Jungle (band) - Wikipedia since their 2014 album with “Busy Earnin’” that I put on a playlist that was part for driving all around the extended DMV. The song that has me really hooked is “Back on 74”, which is on a few playlists. There is a lot of what they play that reminds me of British and European bands in the late 80’s through 90’s that was background soundtrack to so much fun. It was good to see a captured performance, particularly in the Metro.

Personal InfoCloud Site Minor Tweaks to Resolve Issues

I don’t post about site updates for the Personal InfoCloud Site on that site, as it is just content there. But, I do post about them here. This is one of those occasions. The updates today were minor, but after about a year I finally repaired some of the remaining oddities from the move from SquareSpace to hosted WordPress on the same host as vanderwal.net. One of the rough spots was comments usernames turned into email addresses and they are now back to usernames.

There were also some odd errant non-content posts that came out of SquareSpace that were picked up as posts. Those have now been removed.

Google Search Console has now been connected so hopefully Google search will finally work properly, which has been off a bit since the move out of TypePad to SquareSpace (around 2011 or so). The move to WordPress added more friction from detritus that compounds it all.

There are some things in the layout, information design, and page structure that I really want to clean up, as it is bugging more than it was months back. But, writing and filling in some gaps in ideas that I swore were there is taking the priority.

An Insanely Good Bookshelf Viewer

I have a thing for books, bookshelves, bookstores, and libraries. Doing a quick scroll through Mastodon and I saw Marcin Wichary posted something that stopped me cold, in a good way. This bookshelf viewer in his post, My design bookshelves – Aresluna, is amazing.

I have many of the same books and enjoy them, I have the same horizontal stacks in front of vertically placed book, and I did the “ooh, I’ve been wanting to go through this one” and the “if this book is there these other surely are as well”.

But, the most wonderful thing is the design and interaction of the viewer, with the ability to click to see more about a book and go to where you may pick up a copy. I really like the rotation of the inspection lens and being able to see the books behind horizontally shelved books in front of the vertically shelved books. This is so insanely well done.

For a few months I’ve been taking pictures of my shelves, quickly having them converted to markdown lists for the shelf with title and author backlinks, mapped my bookcases and stacks. But, I keep culling my shelves and moving things, which means redoing the pictures and conversion of shelves’ lists. Having something a little more interactive like this may help calm the moving of books, but I do have many I don’t care about, are drastically out of date (unless I time travel), or picked up and just weren’t good.

Seeing Marcin’s interactive interface makes me want to go in that direction. But, for my immediate needs I really need to finish capturing my shelves, converting, and tying the list to the mapping. Someday I can tackle something like what Marcin has done, but maybe someday that will be made well and available to use on my books and collection.

Updated Blog Analytics and Added Personal InfoCloud Site

Yesterday I did a little updating of the blog analytics and took my data workflow and applied it to data from my Personal InfoCloud site. There isn’t as much data, as there are only around 130 posts. But, there are 50 categories and not all categories have been applied to older posts as needed. With the the different data shapes the force graph looks different and works differently, Personal InfoCloud, 2003–2026 forced graph for blog posts and categories, and the bar charts for posts over time and word count and line chart for cumulative word counts, Personal InfoCloud, 2003–2026 Words also looks different.

Both of these have been added to the Blog Analytics page in the Lab, Blog Analytics :: Lab :: vanderwal.net. I have normalized the templates for all of the analytics, to some degree. There is more clean-up I’d like to do on the templates. But, I mostly created these for myself to get an understanding of what is there and patterns.

A Note About the Personal InfoCloud Site

On the Personal InfoCloud site side of things I have quite a few posts that have been queued up to publish there. There are also many things I thought I posted, which have gone to point to, but realize they aren’t there. The laying out of the “four InfoClouds”: Personal, Local, Global, and External hasn’t been laid out and posted that I can find. Also the Personal Info Cycle that frames out the workflows in the Personal InfoCloud for individuals. This has been used for some very large products that many people use. This is part of the downside of presenting these publicly for 20 years and well over 100 times (maybe more than 200) I haven’t sorted out what is fully written and posted. This needs to stay in focus as many of the good patterns laid out are starting to break as development and product leads are reverting to earlier broken patterns thanks to vibe coding and AIs not understanding the improved patterns and the broken patterns are out there in abundance.

Also on the Personal InfoCloud site I was doing a Shift Happened series that had four of the 16 posts written and posted. I need to list out what was, or could be coming.

Homebrew Now with a Mac Desktop App

If you are on Mac, love Open Source, and are using or have been thinking about using Homebrew: The Package Manager for Everywhere, there is now a Mac app for Homebrew - Homebrew/BrewUI: Homebrew’s official macOS GUI.

Somewhere mid-week I stumbled upon it and thought it was worth a try. This may be one of my new favorite apps. I normally update Homebrew on my Mac every month or two. I use Homebrew for all sorts of different things (it is one of my Python builds, but not my main environment). But, having an app with easy quick Homebrew package and cask updates, I can easily see what packages I have (and if they need updating, and what their upstream and downstream dependancies are), and Homebrew doctor is included too.

Prototopia Diner Shared Out

A little over a week ago I hit a creative writing stride and knocked out a small scene in about an hour. I honed it a bit and I shared it with a few people. I had some editing discussions with James and cleaned it up a bit. Even though it is posted it still may be an edit to fix a couple of things, but Prototopia Diner is shared out. Go read it if you wish.

Prototopia Diner is sitting in a new Creative section for my site. I’m not yet adding it to the full site navigation. I’m likely going to move poetry here in some way at some point. I have some other writing I may add in here as well. I wanted a place that I could post creative fictional writing and pull in more poems that I wrote in the mid–90s.

The posts in the Creative section will have a look that is a little different from the rest of the site. On Prototopia Diner I’m using a serif font (Georgia) for easier reading and as a first separation from other portions of the site. I may do something different for each offering, but I’m not fully sure yet.

I Wrote What?

Part of the impetus for writing this post has been driven by the updates at A new Observable | Observable, which I recently wrote about Large Observable Update :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net, and looking at changes in not only Observable, but updates to D3 by Observable. These current and not-too-distant updates have had me thinking about what I could do with some of my blogging data to make interactive charts and graphs. I’ve recently moved a lot of my legacy static charts and graphs to Plotly to gain interaction with them, for many of my own uses. But, in the process of getting a decent data workflow setup for my site (and my notes data) I have relatively clean data locally ready for use and testing.

A Little Data Workflow Background

For this blog I have been pulling down the data from the site’s backend and converting it with a set python script to extract it to SQLite, which is relational but quite fast for reading data and is great for single user write and a few read options. Over the past few months I’ve also been building many data analytics and data visualization prep python scripts (some building JSON files for standalone webpage interfaces). I’ve used Claude to debug, but also just turn out a script in less than couple minutes for the page setup for the D3 or Plotly scripts, which would usually take me 30 to 120 minutes. Once the scripts are set and I’ve reviewed them it is all just setting python flags and minor tweaks to the script to handle a data update.

With these script setups I’ve been able to try quite a few D3 chart and graph options very quickly. Going through the Python code, the data structures for the visualizations, and the hooks for the visualization and I’m rather happy with it for quick outputs.

What Can I See Using Blaugust Data

One of the things I had interest in from my A Wrap to Blaugust / Blaugust run in August was what did all of that look like from a basic statistic and graphical perspective. A few months back I created and ran a bunch of Jupyter queries and visualizations, Personal Blog Data Analysis - Looking at 25 Years. Since then I’ve been thinking about looking at a monthly view with more interactive charts and graphs. Since I had a decent amount of data from August 2026, existing data workflows, and a few D3 charting and graphing options I could work with I took a look.

August Off the Top Force Graph

The first is an interactive forced graph with the blogpost as orange nodes with the size corresponding to word count and the tethered edges link to categories for the post. Clicking on the post will show the related categories and pulling on the post node will start to see the other tethered posts connected through the categories. There are few toggles: 1) Posts and categories or just Posts with their related interconnections; 2) Only show shared categories (a category with more than one post); 3) Post to Time, which may be my favorite view, as it take the graph and lays out the posts left (oldest) to right (most recent), with a small light timeline at the bottom and all the other relationships displayed as well; 4) Post titles, which clutters things a bit and adding the toggle resolved that clutter.

You can view this standalone interactive web chart that sits in the Lab :: Off the Top Analytics at the direct link: Off the Top, August Force Graph with Toggles. A sample is here:

August 2026 Word Counts

As I was going through the data for August 2026 I knew and could see the word counts for posts, which I don’t have easily (nor quickly) available on my site. But, with the data local in SQLite and I’ve been using the local data to run many types of post analytics, word counts become a simple and quick option that doesn’t impact the site’s performance at all.

I was really curious about word counts per post across August, but also was more curious about a cumulative word count across the month as well. A quick and easy bar chart and line graph solved this, both having interactive hovers for metadata. August had 25,390 words posted.

The standalone interactive web chart is also in the Lab and the direct link is: Off the Top, August Word Counts by Post and Cumulative Count. A sample is here:

Cumulative Word Count for 2001 to 2026

Looking at the cumulative count for August 2026 (the 25,390 words posted in the month) I had no idea what that count was in comparison to the whole life span of the blog (under this CMS that started in late October 2001 and not including the static posts prior to that). I know that in the early months and years of the blog I wrote a lot of short posts and the posts were frequent. Looking at word count I wasn’t expecting the first two or three years to have roughly the same growth slope up to 2008.

Looking across 25 years of posts I knew a single post analysis was going to be a bit rough for an interactive standalone webpage. Monthly would be better, but could still be a bit too much to process dynamically in the browser. Quarterly, was just a bit on the thin side and more difficult to see trend shifts and correlative line slope. I settled on a two-month interval and I had something interesting in under a minute.

July and August 2026 were the highest word count across all time on this blog. The 25 thousand words is roughly a quarter of a 250 page book. But, now that I had the bi-monthly chart I can also see the early years I had roughly similar counts per two months up until 2008 and then there was the “great flattening”, until the “great pandemica” lockdown when things ticked up again until lockdown ease and work went back to its normal patterns.

I ended up over the 25 years with 437,417 cumulative words just on this blog. That is roughly 4 books of 250 pages. It would be a rather odd book, but in just considering word count as the focus. I find word counts odd, particularly writing to word counts. I’ve had a regular column in tech publication that had a 750 rough word count topic, this was at a time when my posts were often 1,000 to 1,250 words on average and 750 words was about where I had the framing set to get to the meat of things. I mostly write on this blog to an amount where there aren’t good words left, which is 200 at times to 2,500 or more. To see my writing shifts in the early years roughly similar in trajectory rather interesting.

The standalone interactive web chart is also in the Lab and its direct link is: Off the Top All-time Cumulative Word Count. A sample is here:

Will this Continue?

Now that these are standalone webpage charts and graphs, I’m not sure what I will do. I need to get the templates consistent from a layout and design perspective. But, once the standalone webpage is created I just copy it to the Lab or other location, and this can be automated with a quick script. I think the month-by-month analytic is interesting, at least to me. I have not only the local standalone version that I posted, but a rough output build that isn’t fully self-contained that I can play with and iterate on.

If you like this and want to see more ping me on one of the services or send an e-mail using the Contact in the navbar.

Two New Categories that May Have not been Noticed

In yesterday’s post (A Rainy Virtual Walk Sparks Reading) I had a couple friends reach out today and comment that there was a new category, Calm :: Category :: vanderwal.net, that appeared. This is correct, I added “Calm” as a new category (today I went back and added it to past posts were it applied as well, a few more may be added as I discover the need).

But, I also made another addition in categories and used it on yesterday’s post as well, Ambience :: Category :: vanderwal.net.

The Two New Categories Have Long Been Central as Perspectives

The idea and ideal of calm has been something central that I realized I seek and have noticed for more than a couple of decades (and in reality, much longer). In 2000 I had a moment where this really struck me as I was leading a skunkworks / innovation project, but also writing code and coordinating the design to code, data interactions, and interoperability to other services. There was a lot going on and it needed focus. I hadn’t noticed that my desk phone had been quite for months. The assistant to the Executive Director came into our office to find me and apologize that somehow my phone number had been routed to the bureau’s fax number. I no longer had a working phone at my desk and hadn’t had one for months.

The apology came with a promise to get a phone working for me again. I realized the focus and lack of extra disruption this provided me with a calm environment to get things done. I asked for a promise to not turn the phone back on. My preferred method of communication was instant message, which I would read and reply to when I cleared my head of what I was concentrating on or email as an alternative. The phone ringing meant I should drop what I’m doing and respond.

But, I had long been aware of the need for calm environments. I like the loud, chaotic, and erratic, but in limited doses that have a known end. I learned early that severe silence also is a trigger alert for the brain for trouble. There needs to be a little something, but often something minimal so one can focus where they need to focus.

Calm and Atmospheric Ambience as a Criteria

I’ve long had a preference for calm interfaces and interaction models in design. I tend to push things out that scream for attention. But, with user testing I’ve found most people get distracted for heavy motion interfaces that are there to wow, but the motion isn’t the focus, it is the content that goes with it, which utterly fails at designing for use. This is often from people who don’t understand good design, nor what a product should actually do as the product’s purpose.These are basics, not good to haves.

For years I’ve had my devices with the sound off, or a light ambient sound that is just noticeable in the background. I may have something in the background playing as music or atmospherics (like the background sound of a damp Paris walk for a few hours or a calm cafe). That ambience is akin to calm, but also provides something that is in the background and not screaming for attention. It is an atmospheric layer that can mute or numb the jarring cacophony.

When I’m writing to capture things as notes or writing to understand things a little light ambient sound helps. But, when getting to the honing of that output I need the focus on that task at hand. One of my workflow passes for things I write often goes through iA Writer app, which I bring up a fair amount, a it is focussed on your words you are writing. It is an interface with a calm interface, but can fade to your words you are writing and little more, or further fade further to the line you are writing in context of a few lines around it. The calmness and ambient focus pull everything else away.

There is a kindred relationship between calmness and ambience / ambient environments that pull one into focus and regard the task at hand with the care and attention it needs.

Calm and Ambience are Attributes Worth Noting

In my notes on environment, gatherings, but also apps and services the term “calm” shows up a lot. These are often things I deeply enjoy and appreciate. I equate ambience with atmospheric essence and ambient qualities that don’t overwhelm, but are just noticeably there to augment, but not take the focus.

As I think about adding definitions to the category pages, these two terms, calm and ambience, are ones that are a little squishy. I also realize but I’m realizing I need to call out more as the are often central to getting things with the focus in the right places.

A Rainy Virtual Walk Sparks Reading

This weekend trying to get some fiction reading in and wanting a good café, but none reliably close with the vibe I was currently looking for, I resorted to another trick I use. The nice thing about a café is the ambient noise in the background and the “feeling” of people around. I often can get a lot done in a comfortable café or on a train with work, but also reading.

I resorted to popping open YouTube and searching for Amsterdam, Paris, and London city walks in the rain. YouTube has an abundance of 1-hour to 5-hour ambient walks through the cities with a little background noise. Adding rain into the mix also helps keep the streets more quiet from conversations, plus adds the wonderful sound of vehicles sloshing past.

This time around the option that looked best was a rainy walk through Paris in 4k and getting the volume just right. I turned on the reading light and got cozy on the sofa and it worked well. Every now and then I would look up and the location looked rather familiar, but I couldn’t sort out where it was and that was a little more distracting than I expected. I really enjoy this with physical books.

With ebooks or needing to do a little focussed with and wanting a quick step into another environment like a train, I’ve thrown on the Vision Pro and opened the fantastic app from the French high speed rail service, TGV. The “TVG Inoui” app provides an immersive 3D simulation of riding on the TGV and with an Apple Developer account, that immersive environment can be used as a backdrop to your work in Vision Pro or using the Mac Virtual Display. The sounds and peripheral vision in the environment work well enough to get my brain convinced it is working on the train, even if it is virtually.

Barbican Station Podcast is Back

Burning Questions for Slough House Season 6 Revealed The Spywrite podcast, Barbican Station, is back running with the return of the Slow Horses - Wikipedia series to Apple TV returning. The podcast frames what is potentially going to happen in season 6 of the series, since it using two books from Mick Herron’s Slough House (novel series) - Wikipedia that aren’t quite matches as a pair. I am a huge fan of all of this from podcast, the show, and the books.

I’m over 100 pages into the first of the two books (Joe Country) that is the first of two in this series’ two books. This is the slowest of the book series to get things going. Given the setup and pace so far I don’t know how there would be enough in the book to get a full six episode series out of it, so I can potentially see why it needed more. I am enjoying it, but I haven’t made time for it. I may give it a good couple or three hours a little later today and that may finish it off. I want to have it done and on to the next book (Slough House) by Wednesday.

If you are a fan of either the books or the series, or even both and are not listening to the Barbican Station podcast I strongly recommend it. Not only does Spywrite focus on the Slow Horses TV series, it covers the Mick Herron books, but also most anything spy literature related.

Large Observable Update

Around mid-week Observable announced a major update on their blog (A new Observable) and my evenings turned into looking at updates to the Notebooks, charts / data visualization offerings and much more. There are more interactive charting models and this is the first time I’ve noticed a downloadable notebook app for Macs (I haven’t tried it yet).

I use D3 by Observable quite a bit for data visualizations form data focussed apps (I also have been using Plotly for local Python interactive data apps). I started using D3 in late 2011 for some small data visualization projects, but in 2012 was working on a large project that made extensive use of it and it has stuck as a tool in my tool belt.

I often use Pandas, Polars, and Jupyter, but also RStudio. It might be time to look at Observable’s notebook, but I’m not overly fond of JavaScript and I’ve been using Claude to assist cut down the struggles with JS and getting to looking at and interacting with data visualizations.

The D3 and Observable sites have been some of the best resources for understanding data visualization basics and good fits for data and visualizations. The education aspect, as well as the really good quality charts and visualization tools have made it a regular resource that I use and regularly point others to.

I still have a lot of Observable and D3js tabs open as I’m pulling better notes for myself. But, I figured it was a good time to share it with others.

Tony Seale’s Knowledge Graph and Complexity Posts

This week I fell into two (mostly) enjoyable rabbit holes. One was digging into the writings of Tony Seale (one of The Knowledge Graph Guys) after a few friends had shared his posts in LinkedIn. The hedging of the enjoyability stems from the utter poor environment LinkedIn is for finding, holding on to, sharing outside the confines, and working with wonderful ideas in one’s own space and properly giving attribution. Only posting information in LinkedIn is like going to a huge supermarket, but cooking, and serving your creation there. LinkedIn is poorly built for this intention. If you care about the ideas you are creating and sharing, put them where you control them and others who are inspired and want to find and interact more with your ideas and you can do so far more easily.

That aside, I did enough battle LinkedIn’s incredibly poor interaction design and information design for idea sharing to find an abundance of good ideas shared by Tony Seale. So many framings are at a good level of a little more than simple but crafted well to have concepts that are difficult for others to grasp easily put closer to within their reach. I am always looking for explainers like these to share and for inspiration. But, even better when the ideas and framings are really solid, like Seale’s.

I dug back into the blog of The Knowledge Graph Guys, which is good, but is lacking a name and the posts don’t have the consistency of the same voice, which is to be expected. But, give names to the different voices.

I found some of Seale’s posts on his Tony Seale – Medium space. These Medium posts focus more on complexity, which I enjoyed as well.

I pulled some notes and graphics from Tony Seale’s LinkedIn posts, but I’m still pulling all of that together (see frustration with LinkedIn). I really like the linking to prior content and outside material in his posts as well as those in The Knowledge Graph Guys (which isn’t all guys). Many of the posts I agree with as stand-alone pieces, but I need to pull them together in context to see those connections. (It is also ironic that Knowledge Graph focussed content uses LinkedIn as the only instance where getting and retaining connections, as in a graph, is quite difficult.) That said it is likely worth your time digging.

Affinity for the Canva Affinity

I’ve been a long-time fan of the design apps by Affinity. When they were bought by Canva I had a little concern (just a little as I know some of the people behind Canva (Canva), but also I have confidence in them to do the right thing). When the updated Affinity Studio app (Affinity) came out from Canva that collapsed all the paid design apps (and more) in to one app and it was free, I was really curious and have become quite impressed.

Over the last many months I’ve been playing with Affinity and trying various things out that make the combined app really interesting. I’ve loved the standalone photo app, but that is one I’ve had the toughest time getting my mind around the new dynamics of it. But, I love the typography focus as it gives a lot of control. The publishing app and its integration have me using typography and components of the publishing app to do interesting small projects.

One of the things I did with the Affinity combined app was a series of playing with a capital letter A. One of my favorites turned out to be one I call “mallard A”. Mallard A is simple, and uses the vector tools to some frayed feather touches to the bottom of the bend to serif. But, I also liked the ease and control playing with the gradient.

Behind the Art Sale, What’s The Big Deal

The past few weeks I’ve been watching the The Big Deal with Steph McGovern and finding it better than I expected. I’m not big on reality shows with the “kicking off the island”.

But, this isn’t fully bothering me, as the premise is about art and taking seven teams of two (The Big Deal with Steph McGovern comes to BBC One Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland Screen) to learn about the art world beyond the artists. The host, Steph McGovern - Wikipedia, whose father was a professional artist and she grew up around artist and the art market. Seeing the “in between” the artist and buyers is an interesting look.

The teams interact with artists to set relationships to represent their works in a variety of environments. So far there have been auctions, pitching to homeowners for bulk purchases, and galleries. Many of the teams are learning and stumbling, but the show is entertaining.

Farmer's Market Nice Surprise

Today at my local farmer’s market, one of my favorite stands had sliced raw yellow with red stripe beets out as samples. I hadn’t seen raw beets set out to sample raw before and I gave them a try. I was surprised by how nicely sweet they were with a little bit of beet “dirt” flavor. I found they are Badger Flame Beets | Fresh Harvest. I had never heard of Badger Flame Beets, but after tasting I picked up four or five. It seems like they would go well thinly sliced with a light olive oil and balsamic vinegar with some thinly sliced sweet onion, crumbled feta, and toasted pine nuts.

The Category Page has Been Updated

Today after some small tweaks I moved the updated category page into the Off the Top blog area. Clicking any category will bring it up. Let’s say you want pages categorized with “folksonomy”, Folksonomy :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net, and you get the updated category page. It allows you to filter the 128 (as of today for posts categorized as having folksonomy content) blog posts by a five-year range, as well as a co-category. It also shows a distribution chart with marks as 5-year demarcations.

A Quick Category Page Lab Update

Today I thought I may be able to tackle 2 of the 6 tasks for features and functionality I want to take care of before moving the Category page in the Lab to the production side. Well, one of the tasks (the definitions) I knew is going to be pushed out as it going to take sit down and type words time. The other sort of large task was going to break some ease of use functionality and breaking something I find helpful is a bit of a problem, but also adds odd friction.

What Got Done

I was able to knock out four of the tasks that get the Category page in a much better place than it is at the moment.

The sidebar with the “Year Range” and “Co-category” selection was cleaned up and now with fixing the line wrapping for the long category names, so they no longer go under the radio button when the line wraps.

The inconsistency of the design of the counts for the two areas of selection is fixed and now the count has a subtle light box around them so the counts are noticeable but not drawing too much attention. Working with shades of orange is always tedious, but I like orange enough to deal with it.

There is now a noticeably clear filter selections button for the sidebar and in the main content section at the top. The button at the bottom of the sidebar to submit the filter selections matches the clear the filters buttons. The sidebar radio buttons (if you have JavaScript on) don’t require the submit button, but it is there for those with JavaScript turned off. This wraps up the sidebar.

The unfiltered category page now starts with a distribution chart that is larger than the sparklines on the category listing pages and it has small demarcations every 5 years. This is generated with SVG, like the sparklines.

When you make filter selections the distribution chart goes away (until the selections are cleared) and the filters selected are now laid out properly. This section also has a clear filter selection button as well.

You can try it from the link in the category filtering test section of the Lab notes about this.

This May be Close to Pushing Live

I am going to sleep on it and possibly push it live tomorrow on on the holiday Monday.

Category Page Filtering Testing

Little by little I’ve been tackling some of the functional needs for this site. As I went through the initial look at the analytics for my blog and site related to content (see Personal Blog Data Analysis - Looking at 25 Years) I see needs from a use perspective from visitor / reader perspectives.

I have many categories (210 as of today) and most posts have at least two categories on them. Categories are a means for a reader to click on them and find more posts that are similar, or contain similar content. Some of the categories have more than 100 posts and there needs to be a means to filter those down somewhat sanely. The two options I’ve leaned into are time ranges and co-categories. I have started framing out the both of these filters in the vanderwal.net Lab and the Lab’s Category Tests :: Lab :: vanderwal.net (go to the Category Testing Page Filtering) to get to the testing of the iterations.

Filtering Options

With 25 years of blog posts and coming up on 2,200 posts breaking down the years as one filtering option is to filter by year ranges. There is a heavy volume and velocity of posts in the first 7 years and then it slowed down. Trying to get consistent year ranges and having most year ranges have posts, which still narrows the number of posts, was one of the main goals. The happy spot seemed to be around a range of 5 years with the aim of the start of the year range being the “0” and “5” year as the start of the range (this theme will resurface more with other restructurings).

The co-categories from a surfacing and selecting perspective is decent, but some categories have long lists of co-categories. Currently selecting a radio button triggers the change if the user’s browser has JavaScript on, but the filter button to select the filter at the bottom of the list works even if JavaScript is off.

I still have tweaks I want to iterate through and those will continue in the Lab. The listing of the active filters is something I need to improve as well as adding a button to clear the filters.

More Modifications for the Page

One thing that will be coming in the near future is the unfiltered category page will have a distribution chart at the top of the page, like a larger sparkline with labelling (hopefully) for years or year ranges. Once this is added and the filtering is in a good spot, the modifications will move to production from the Lab.

Farther down the line a category definition will be added to the page at some point. The database has been set for a while to handle this. The backend management needs to get built and the category pages need to get enabled for to surface the definitions. Then the definitions need to get written as the definitions are not dictionary definitions, but definitions of “the what”, but also how they are applied.

A Vision Pro Perspective

I have used many different VR headsets at hackathons and studio labs, but the visual quality was less than desirable. Reading in them was far less than optimal. I had found the 3D immersive capabilities somewhat interesting for training physical tasks and heightening awareness skills. But, the quality of the headsets’ visual quality and rough interaction models were large hurdles to overcome.

A couple years back (or so) I had tried the Apple Vision Pro out of curiosity at an Apple Store, after its launch and impressive walkthroughs. I was blown away with the visual quality as it was generations better than other options out there. But, the interactions with the apps and interface were incredibly simple to understand and became very quickly intuitive.

The Apple Store demo really piqued my interest. I could see its upsides for consumption. But, I could also see the potential for using it for remote work and interaction environments. That work potential became a large curiosity. The price of the Apple Vision Pro was a huge hurdle to go digging for the sake of curiosity. But, when Apple added the capability for a virtual monitor for your Mac with wide and ultrawide options, that started nudging the viability for curiosity. But, the price was still a bit too steep. I started looking at used Vision Pro models and prices were around $1k off new purchase prices. The friction there was knowing how to find one in good shape. I asked in an Apple forum I am part of how to purchase a used Vision Pro and someone in the forum had one they were thinking about selling. We chatted and worked out how to meet and purchase the device.

I figured if the two big things I had interest in it was worth the investment in the used AVP: 1) Viability for virtual meetings; 2) Virtual monitor. If it didn’t meet my interest or curiosity waned, I figured I could sell it on and get close to what I paid.

Before the Two Use Cases I Care About

The questions many ask are around:

Quality?

The quality of the hardware, visual displays, and interactions are seriously impressive. Opening web pages and reading ebooks is really nice clean and really impressive. There are no jaggies nor glitching.

Does it feel heavy?

I picked up the Annapro 2 add-on that is a brace that is padded and used at the top of the forehead area that takes the weight off your face and balances it much better. I regularly will have 2 to 5 hour sessions with the Vision Pro on and it doesn’t feel heavy nor cause neck strain for me.

How much do you use it?

I used it at least once a week, but many weeks around three times a week for tasks, virtual monitor use (more on this below), and some content consumption.

App availability?

There are apps for most things I do (many of my regular apps are available as visionOS native apps, and most other are available as iPad apps that are made Vision Pro capable), but not all apps that I really want are available as native visionOS apps. Two of the apps I really want on the device are the Drafts app (this is how I capture and surface quick notes across devices, not having it natively is a pain) and iA Writer as the Vision Pro a great device for focussed work (the input side is something). Having native Obsidian would help a lot as well, but that is more difficult as it is an Electron-based app.

I really want data visualization apps for larger data sets or data with a lot of complications, so that scaling the interface allows for better examination and interrogation of the data.

I really want Freeform as a solid whiteboard option, but it is so close and yet so far.

Isn’t it mostly a content consumption device?

The consumption capabilities of the Vision Pro are amazing, but for a consumption primary device the price is a bit much. The immersive environments to work in or consume content in are insanely well done. The immersive video content is stunning to say the least. Watching movies or other video content is a really good experience in 3D or regular viewing.

Curiosity Around Virtual Meetings

The Apple marketing pitched the Vision Pro as a good virtual interaction device. It used personas that were your face and hands. But, the big question I had around this was the ability to have meetings with colleagues that normally require hopping on a train or plane to get in the same room for 2 to 4 hours, or a couple days. That in-person interaction around plans in documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and whiteboards with a few people seems really viable. I really wanted to test it out that interpersonal interaction capability.

People that work together are most often rather distributed these days and there is no getting around that and travel isn’t cheap. But, if you can shift two or three fly-in meetings to Vision Pro you have basically paid for the device. But, if you can have more solid interactive meetings between the fly-in meetings that have better value than Zoom or Teams or even augment them with greater interaction and fidelity, that is a great win as well.

When I picked up my used Vision Pro it was still the first version of visionOS. The personas were decent and far better than other VR / AR providers, but could be better. Within a few months a major update was made and the personas really became good. Within a few minutes you forget you are interacting with a persona, and it feels normal with great facial gestures and hand and shoulders captured too.

Trying the interaction around documents and presentations with friends has been incredibly good. Once you open a document the person(s) you are interacting with shift from in front of you to arranged next to you and can point and touch what is being shared. This was and is incredibly good. I’ve done 2 and 3 hour sessions in the virtual meeting sessions and for most things it is really good where showing, talking about, interacting in shared documents, and editing is quite good.

The two limitations of this model are: 1) SharePlay is used for the interactions so it is capped to 5 people in the virtual interactive environment at a time; 2) The whiteboard with Apple’s Freeform (Apple launches Freeform) is their virtual whiteboard, which is similar to a Miro or Mural. The 5 person limitation isn’t bad and it is fine for many fly-in meeting needs for planning and check-ins, but 10 for in the same space and then have 5 person breakout sessions with much better interaction would really go a long way. Freeform in Vision Pro really need an input device and the best option is an iPad, which is rather good, but really needs a few more improvements. The iPad Pro with the Pencil Pro and the virtual shadow and the shadow for bevelled orientation seems like it was designed with Vision Pro in mind. But there needs to be some sort of pass-through to take some of the friction out of this. You can get rather proficient with a little time using the iPad Pro as the Freeform interface to do detailed work. The dedicated virtual pens lose fidelity and detail and from my perspective are a poor option.

A great advantage of using the Vision Pro virtual meetings is the focus of participants. In regular meetings most participants aren’t focussed on the matter at hand. For fly in meeting with distracted participants that is a very expensive problem. The distractions are normal and viable to keep on top of projects and problems that happen no matter if a meeting is happening or note. The advantage of Vision Pro is it puts the meeting front and center and the interactions with others in the shared virtual meeting, which is an amazingly strong value.

For virtual meetings this is a good option, but almost there and there needs to be some focus on what is needed to get there. There have been small steps, but the steps need to be more frequent and a bit larger. The other downside is a network effect problem (network effect as the converse), as there aren’t enough people who have Vision Pro devices to have ad hoc meetings with partners and clients at the drop of a hat. I have a few friends whom I interact with that I can test the advances around Share Play and different shared interaction capabilities.

Virtual Monitor

The other added value functionality I was curious about was the Virtual Monitor for Macs. I use the Vision Pro as a virtual monitor for my MacBook Pro quite a bit. The ability to use regular width screen (roughly equivalent to my 16 inch Mac Book Pro or a bit bigger), wide screen (about two screen widths), and ultra wide that wraps (about 3 screens) is really impressive. I most often use the ultrawide option when I need 3 or 4 apps open to have a screen I’m working in, one screen size for my notes, and one or two for reference.

There are two upsides for the Virtual Monitor mode. One is the ability to have Vision Pro apps open around the monitor mode as sticky notes, MindNote mindmap app, Safari floating with a page open, OmniOutliner lists open, and Apple Music. When I’m at my desk I have an external monitor to the left of my laptop stand, so I have two screens. The real life two screen setup causes more neck strain than the wide or ultrawide screen (by a long shot) and that is including the weight of the Vision Pro headset.

The quality of the pass through was a big question. The quality isn’t the same as the amazing screen on the MacBook Pro, but it is two 4k monitors with one in front of each eye. It sometimes is a little less than optimal, but if I move the virtual monitor either closer or farther back it gets to a sweet spot for really nice clarity. I don’t use the virtual monitor or ultra detail work or color precision work as the MacBook Pro screen is superior (similar for my 4k external monitor on my desk).

Two things I really enjoy doing in the virtual monitor are working on system mappings as I can go really wide and tackle and working in Freeform as a virtual whiteboard (it would be so much better were Freeform inputs much better in Vision Pro in its native app). I use Canvas in Obsidian for some capturing of systems and models, I also use OmniGraffle (the Mac version, as there isn’t an Vision Pro version yet, nor a working version of the iPad app for OmniGraffle 8 - I’m moved most of my OmniGraffle work into the beta of version 8 over the last year). In OmniGraffle I don’t use paper size, as I only use it for digital work, so I can go quite wide and tall.

One other advantage of the Virtual Monitor is that for the price of three good 4k monitors the Vision Pro is around the same price.

Vision Pro Impression Today

I still have the Vision Pro and I still get a lot of value from the device and regular use. There are some weeks where much of my use in the device is consumption, but pure consumption weeks are fairly rare.

One of my favorite uses is to put it on and just focus on work and tasks. Dropping into an immersive environment or the TGV app (a virtual TGV train trip that can provide a train focussed environment through the developer capabilities). I find trains are a great focus environment to get things done for me and this app works really well to resemble that.

I am really happy I picked up the Vision Pro, particularly used, as the price point felt it was quite on target. I really would love for Apple to take larger and more progressive steps. There are times I don’t know that Apple understands the full impact and focus of all the use cases, but I’ve virtually attended a few of the Vision Pro Developer full-day series and Apple is covering a lot of ground and covers many of the use cases well. I look forward to what is coming down the road.

Can I See What You Are Writing

The medium for thinking and consumption is something I continually consider. I don’t consume audiobooks, they don’t work for me and I have too many foundational problems with them. But, I do enjoy podcasts, but that is a naturally spoken medium. For consumption of fiction and most non-fiction I have a strong preference for print (physical and/or electronic). Non-fiction text gives the opportunity for illustrations that help augment and anchor the meaning. Video can work for many concepts if they are done well and illustrate concepts.

Reading fiction my mind slips into vivid depictions of the story and scenes (if the book captures me). Being able to see characters in my head helps keep the storyline sorted. I really appreciate authors that are crafty with languages that trigger the visualizations as I am reading. With reading fiction my mind may also drift (if the book is good, but this also happens with non-fiction as I am framing where this new information sifts in with other things known). When my mind drifts I may still be “reading” and flipping pages, but when I snap out of it I can flip back to where my mind drifted and continue on again (as a couple of my college professor encourage this is a really good and engaging way to read). Most often the drifting is related to something in the book triggering ideas and it gets my mind going. Audio books have my mind drift out from a of lack of interest, but more problematic is there really isn’t a good way to go back and pick-up where my mind drifted (oddly podcasts my mind will drift from them triggering ideas and also from a conversation the podcast triggers, particularly when they run adjacent to things I know well or they mis-state something).

The visualization in my mind is really helpful to keep engaged and it is great for recall as well. But, when a book turns into a film or tv show it sometimes helps (when there are many characters) to anchor the “whos”. The reading of plays I find difficult, unless I have seen the play or have photos or sketches of who is playing the role and then I fully connect. But, if it a book with illustrated characters, like the Moomins (I read a lot of Moomin books when I was a kid) and that turns into tv or a movie it breaks things my mental image of the illustrations through the stories are not in alignment. The Moomins were quite off (at least in the US series). But, Paddington worked just fine. With the Moomins becoming semi-popular in the US with young adults, I’ll ask about a person’s favorite Moomin or story and I find we are talking about Moomins from different universes it seems.

Seeing is Understanding

The mental images and visualizing ideas and concepts also drive explainers in presentations and the use of animation in presentations. That same principle for my engaging also goes outward when explaining things for others. Creating images and animations, for complicated or complex ideas, models, or patterns allows for pulling them apart, seeing things interact, and also provides the ability to point and talk about something specific and makes things less abstract.

I’m thinking about text and visualizations as I’m working on creating small videos of some of the core concepts and ideas around folksonomy, Model of Attraction, InfoClouds, etc. Listening to words is a thin and ephemeral representation of the ideas. Seeing the words is a bit better. But words and seeing relationships are key to communicating far better. I’m mindful not all minds are alike nor process the same way, so having many paths for engaging works quite well.

A New Chapter for Apple

Growing up on the West Coast, with a good chunk in Northern California, Apple was always present. The framing of personal computing was continually through the lens of what Steve Jobs was talking about on the news and local Northern California interviews. I had friends with Apple IIs and Macs, while I used the family Osbourne Executive (yes the business case study). I followed Apple through Jobs leaving and returning (along with closely following Next Computer). I picked up my first personal Mac in January 2002 (My TiBook Arrived) and have been fully onboard since.

When Steve Jobs passed and Tim Cook took over, that was a big change for me. But things improved for the most part. Apple grew and products kept getting better, particularly after Jony Ive left and Apple Silicon arrived. Cook had to deal with a lot of garbage, but has kept Apple functioning and doing extremely well. Supply chain is a beast at scale and things stayed on course and mostly weathered the RAM chip shortages.

With John Ternus starting as of today in the CEO role, I’m looking forward to what he brings. With the hardware just released for Mac Mini and Studio and the really good upgrade routing through the beats for OS 27 Ternus should be off to a good start. I am looking forward to seeing how this chapter plays out.