Monkinetic Weblog

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeee EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee!!!... EEeeeeeeee!

I stood in line for two hours this morning and cast my vote in the 2016 general election. As promised, I voted for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine for President and Vice-President.

Down-Ticket

Down-ticket I voted a mix of Democrats and Republicans depending on local issues.

(I voted Republican in one race specifically because the other candidate was Libertarian, and that ship sailed a LONG time ago for me. Peter Thiel's dystopian interpretation and realization of that philosophy hasn't helped their cause.)

Embarrassingly, this was the first time I sat down and read all the election prep documents that Arizona and Gilbert sent out, and Googled and researched various candidates for the local "non-partisan" elections. It's amazing what you learn, and it made me sign up for permanent early voting, even before I realized it would allow me to skip the two-hour wait at the early voting stations.

Vote!

The polls are going to be nuts on election day, if (as I hope) voter turnout is good. If you are a legal voter in the United States (even if living out of the country) I hope you have made provisions to cast your ballot this year - our franchise is not something to give up lightly.

I've had family members and friends half-joke about whether their vote is going to "count" -- if their vote is not the same as mine, or if their preferred candidate does not win -- as if one's vote is only worth casting if it's a "deciding vote". Your vote absolutely counts, as David Walbert explains:

> ...every vote does count; it just counts in a more complicated way. When you vote for president, remember that you're voting in a state election, not a national election.

(Read that whole article, it's interesting)

No matter, what, the fact that we can vote and participate in this democracy is crucial. Get out and do it. The only way your vote stops counting is if:

1. You throw it away by not voting
2. Candidates start deciding they're not going to honor the results.

The AuthaGraph World Map projection is winning awards for its design and superior area mapping, better showing the relative sizes of land masses and oceans.

via MeFi

Also:

The very cool TrueSize map

512 Pixels:

>However, the startup chime is ingrained into the experience of having a Mac, I’m sad to see it go. A Mac without the chime feels broken, even if I know it isn’t. I don’t power down my machines often, but I liked hearing the chime when I power them back up.

I'll feel the startup chime's absence more than any missing port or spec (cries). The Mac is changing - as it must. The startup chime connected today's Macs to the whole history, the red thread of user-friendliness that marked the Mac as something that "Just Worked".

Sorry, I'm just a bit choked up.

Andy Baio, one of my blog heroes, redesigned his blog, Waxy.org this week. In addition to being a lovely design, it's now responsive and a bit more modern.

What really stands out to me is Andy's comments on the state of blogging these days, why he blogs still, and why he is still investing in a platform that is all his. He expresses very eloquently why his blog - and this one - is still going, despite periods of neglect: it's a labor of the heart that connects people in long-form.

Update Nov 1, 2016: I first posted this series of tweets as a Storify but the embed UI was so bad I couldn't leave it here. I'm going to rewrite this as a blog post once I have time to digest it some more. In the meantime you can read An accounting of The Acountant on Storify.

You know, the one where they slowly get their memories back, and drag some poor nearly helpless sidekick around while killing bad guys and making things right?

Yeah, it was the best!

No, not that one. Not that one either, or that one.

No, THIS ONE, the Long Kiss Goodnight. Greatest amnesiac assassin move ever. Geena F'ing Davis is the one-time assassin, and Samuel L. Jackson the nearly helpless (but not completely hopeless) private eye getting dragged all over, getting shot at and screaming a lot.

Watch it. Now watch it again. You'll thank me.

I've been raving a bit on Twitter and here on the blog about John Scalzi's new audio novella, The Dispatcher. It's a very engaging listen - and part of that is because it was envisioned and written as an audio book first and only.

That being said, this interview on Audiblerange with the narrator - Zachary Quinto (of audio book The Dispatcher fame[^1]) - gets into some of the recording process as well as why The Dispatcher is so good, and you should read it.

[^1]: You may also know Zach from one of his lesser-known roles, Sylar in Tim Kring's Heroes teleplay, and Spock from J.J. Abram's derivative motion picture work, Star Trek.

Wonderful story from Jamie Zawinski (one of the founders of Netscape and Mozilla.org) about the movie They Live (creepy as hell in 1988), grafitti artist Shepherd Fairey, and how he (Jamie) got Mozilla to invest in a constructivist/futurist brand identity that called on Soviet imagery to promote Free Software.

They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo

So conflicted. Thoughts later.

Twitter for [#appleevent](http://monkinetic.blog/tag/appleevent)

Brent Simmons, currently of Omni Software and long-time Mac developer, shares his thoughts on the Surface Studio. I agree with Brent (and many others) that it seems like Apple has forgotten/disregarded the people who use their computers to make things - the same people who stuck with and evangelized the platform during the Dark Times.

Tomorrow, Apple is going to show their new hardware, and I honestly cannot imagine liking anything I see more than I like this Studio PC. That makes me sad. I remember when Apple's hardware was worthy of the OS we knew and loved. Doesn't seem like that any more.

I am hoping that this lights a fire under Apple's hardware branch - pull them out of their floating white eggs and get them back in the real world, solving real user's problems, and giving us - their users - the breadth and depth of hardware Apple is capable of creating.

Never thought I'd be including "Microsoft Gets It" in a blog post, but here we are. Microsoft has been targeting "creatives" with their recent commercials (as seen continuously on the shows on Apple TV CBS app), and while the comparisons between the Surface pro and the Mac are a bit disingenuous, replace them with this product and the ads are dead on.

The Surface Studio is a new iMac-style PC from Microsoft (is this their first actual desktop product?) that captures the iMac spirit in an interesting, lays-nearly-flat design that includes touch/pen features in the screen.

Honestly if I saw this image without knowing who it was I'd half-expect to see it running Mac OS. It's got all the specs, and the Surface line has - so far - has had excellent industrial design and durability. It's good work, and Apple honestly needs the competition. The Mac line has stagnated for a number of years now, it's time for some new energy in the market.

Back when I was mostly a designer, I discovered Colour Lovers, a great palette-sharing website that helped me brainstorm my way through a lot of site designs.

In redesigning this blog recently, I found it again and was reminded how much I love color. Some samples that I used to grab some colors for this site...

#5e5e5e;">#5e5e5e;" target="_blank">Color by #5e5e5e;" target="_blank">COLOURlovers

#5e5e5e;">#5e5e5e;" target="_blank">Color by #5e5e5e;" target="_blank">COLOURlovers

#5e5e5e;">#5e5e5e;" target="_blank">Color by #5e5e5e;" target="_blank">COLOURlovers

Since I'm in a bit of the old design-mode here on the blog lately, was reading up on type anatomy on Fonts.com. Handy resource for those of us who might be getting rusty.

For a bit of variety, I decided to figure out how to generate a new front page header background and link colors whenever I rebuilt the blog (new posts, etc). This is still a static site, so no wizzy javascript stuff, I just wanted to do it in SASS.

This is what I came up with.

```sass $colors-list: ( // background color, link color #DAE076 #AD5C55 #A9C9C5 #4A676D #AD5C55 #5E7D68 #374768 #718A8A, ); $color-index: random(length($colors-list));

// Header description box
$colors: nth($colors-list, $color-index);
$header-desc-background-color: nth($colors, 1);
// Link color
$link-color: nth($colors, 2);

```

I may rework this as a map (dictionary) later on so I can add other theme-y things, but it was kinda fun to work out for now.

RT @ComedyForNiggas: America in a picture https://t.co/oVyPbiw42t

John Scalzi's new audiobook-only story is out (and FREEEEEEEE)! The Dispatcher is fantastic, a short listen (~2 hours), and is narrated by The Other Spock Zachary Quinto. It's really good, with an interesting core concept that is a pleasant departure from John's typical Sci-Fi fare.

> "Your face is always smug. You have resting smugface"

And dangit if Zach doesn't hit the narration out of the park. He brings each of the characters to life, subtle and unsubtle, whether noble, time-worn, or murderous. Can't wait to see (hear?) what else he ends up narrating.

(Resting Smugface is my next band name.)

I'm speaking as an Ex-Conservative, Ex-Republican who cannot abide what the party has largely become, and has lost affinity with the selfish, neo-libertarian outlook of that party, even before Trump came along. Trump represents the most horrid of personal, professional, and political behaviors and needs to lose by as large a margin as we can muster.

I'm voting for Hillary Clinton for President of the United States, and likely Democrat on most of the down-line races in AZ.


Still looking around for static asset host, and maybe a new domain? Monkinetic.com expired (it's a sad story involving blogger apathy and 2FA gone rogue).

RT @SciencePorn: https://t.co/tt6wsOQJsA