Category Archives: web

web: let me link to a song, not a service!

I blog a lot about music. I want you to be able to play the songs I write about. You probably pay for a music streaming service that has millions of songs on it including the ones I discuss; you … Continue reading

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software: sneaky “gnihctamsim” phishing

I got an e-mail asking for my bank details. From: Michael Doyle <ventas@farbiq.com.ar>To: undisclosed recipients:;Reply to: logistica.industrialparts@gmail.comSubject: Re: URGENT PROFORMA INVOICE Hello Dear, Greetings Our company has approved the attached purchase order. Please review the purchase order list, and return … Continue reading

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music: Everyone Knows That, Radio Arabesque, other lostwave

Two commenters on this blog (here and here) randomly asked me about the song “Ulterior motives (everyone knows that)”. I though they were spammers, but it turns out there was a genuine Internet hunt for the song, forming its own … Continue reading

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web: sometimes it’s not a typo

Anomie & Bonhomie is an underrated Scritti Politti album, the rapping and scratching and turntable noises put some fans off. “Umm” is a phenomenal everything-but-the-kitchen-sink track, and “Tinseltown to the Boogiedown” just oozes style. Don’t call me Shirley, Lee Both … Continue reading

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web: spammers copying my pages

Someone found my post about my legendary Herman-Miller Levity standing desk and added a comment asking about operating manuals for it. When I searched (using DuckDuckGo) for manuals Herman-Miller “Levity standing desk”, it returned my post, but also found bogus … Continue reading

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web: multimedia killed by far worse videos

Video now consumes most Internet bandwidth. But video is terrible for imparting information about… stuff on web pages, or for teaching me about music. Videos that scroll through web pages It is nuts that in order to read about, say … Continue reading

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demise of the open web, yet again

More handwringing over how the web has gotten worse. There have always been lots of The Web is Dead articles – here’s one from 2010!, but Denny Vrandečić mentioned more recent ones in a great Facebook post, including Why the … Continue reading

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web: how to read blocked web articles

It’s an arms race to read articles that fade out under a “Please subscribe” overlay. In Firefox, try: I feel bad doing this, and a little less bad for running uBlock Origin to disable ads. I subscribe to the Guardian, … Continue reading

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YouTube jokes

Concrete science A science YouTuber made an entertaining informative video “Explaining concrete while getting buried in it,” and found that he would rise out of the concrete slurry. Which prompted this carefully-researched anecdote: skierpage9:39 “I did not expect to be … Continue reading

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buying music in high-resolution audio formats

Joni Mitchell’s Blue on vinyl has a distortion at times behind her voice and piano. Time to buy a digital track and see if it’s still there. What the heck, go big and get the 192 kHZ 24-bit FLAC high-res … Continue reading

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