My favorite way to know if a product/service works as advertised is to… use it. The devil is (usually) in the details, and the proof is in the eating. People naturally identify with the software/services they use, so getting an accurate picture (as an outsider) is tricky nowadays. A TOS can also give insight into a company’s product/service.

Watching the web tech mainstream/influencers transition back to a html first approach is fascinating. Frameworks are returning to single file soc approaches that bundle and progressively enhance scoped js and css components automatically.

See syntax for webc/11ty, svelte, enhance, lit/google, vuejs marko, astro, and more in a rare history lesson.

Chrome --headless can dump the dom to the command line. Set a virtual time budget in vms [?] for the js to settle down and then do stuff.

Html() {
  chromium \
    --headless \
    --incognito \
    --dump-dom \
    --virtual-time-budget=999999 \
    "$1"
}

HtmlToText() {
  lynx -stdin -dump -nolist
}

This has “peculiar” uses. Fun fact: invoking the name of chromium around normal people confers alien–like status.

Html 'https://www.youtube.com/' | HtmlToText

Every so often I’m reminded of how tricky Wikipedia is — especially for current events. It’s not magically unbiased. Inventing authoritative sources of truth with well timed edits for real world persuasive power is the oldest working trick in the book.

Words and identifiers are at most substitutes for intangibles that cannot be expressed. The power of naming matters more than the name itself.

Am I cool now? :)

“The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

HTML compilation is fun to watch. Here’s what hugo’s --debug output for this blog looks like right now. Rendering takes about 25 seconds on an old laptop. The linearity is easy to see, but that’s the least of my problems ;-)

Remember when it was thought that all combustible materials consist of two parts? Phlogiston and dephlogiston (calx). Goodness, someone today just made me remember the most random thing from chemistry history (from when I was in school).

The ‘best current practice’ category of rfcs beats any blog post you can read for a topic. For example, I recently got tired of my domain host’s dns flakiness and did my own thing.

I couldn’t fully remember how soa serial numbers worked for secondaries and rfc 2182 showed me the money real fast. The alternative is sludging through multiple serps of ad spam.

It’s unusual, but my favorite part of blogging is coming up with the most boring and anti–clickbait titles possible. In another life, I’d be an undercover agent.

Most software, framework, and programming debates online reduce to disputes over company or personal preferences — mindshare. Technical and architectural debates are rare — those fights are the most interesting because that’s the important part, at least imo.