Multifarious Threads

My current setup

28th August 2018 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

I imagine this will only be of interest to ridiculous geeks like me, but I thought I’d share anyway. I’ve enjoyed reading about others’ setups for years, though I’ve never actually managed to write about my own until now.

Hardware

I use a late-2016 15-inch/38-centimetre MacBook Pro. Because this model has had some keyboard issues, I’ve been using the Apple extended keyboard to type. (I have AppleCare, but I haven’t taken my computer in for repairs yet because I would rather not go without my working machine for a week if I can reasonably avoid it.) I set up a makeshift bedside desk to use while lying down, using two horizontal 79-centimetre/30-inch-long stand-alone shelving/organising units. The units are placed back to back so they can work as a low-rise table that’s flush with the top of my bed. I use a tilted laptop stand that I received as a birthday present last year. I am admittedly one of Those People who exclusively uses Apple hardware; in addition to my computer, I have an iPhone 7 and a first-generation iPad Pro. I’m just not very fond of Windows or Android.

Operating system

I’m currently running the MacOS Mojave public beta, which I installed a few days ago. Though it’s a beta, I haven’t had any major issues with it. My iPhone and iPad run iOS 11; I didn’t bother installing the iOS 12 beta. I’ve primarily used Macs for eight years.

Browsers

On the Mac, I use both Firefox Developer Edition and Chrome for different reasons. On the iPhone and iPad, I just use mobile Safari. I haven’t used Mac Safari as a primary browser in years; I prefer the extensibility of Chrome and Firefox.

Writing/blogging

I typically write essays and long-form articles in Ulysses, and blog entries in either MarsEdit or Ulysses. Note that Ulysses has an unavoidable subscription system. I’m opposed to subscriptions for software that isn’t prohibitively expensive or highly specialised in general, but it had become an important part of my workflow by the time the developers announced the change in late 2017. I ended up signing up for Setapp – a sort of Netflix for Mac applications – to continue to use Ulysses’ updates, since I would have access to other programs, too.
If I need to have more precise control over the layout of a document, I use Pages.
I only use MS Word to write or edit work-related documents that other people will also edit, or to ensure compatibility when I export from another program. Otherwise, I avoid it, since I find it unbearably clunky. The same applies to the rest of Microsoft Office except for Excel.

Social-media and chat clients

On the iPhone, I use Tweetbot, though I find it less useful these days thanks to Twitter’s hostility towards third-party developers. I’ve also tried Twitterriffic. I’m unsure which client to use on the desktop these days.
I won’t use Facebook’s data-hogging mobile app and just use the website to post.
Flume is my go-to desktop Instagram client.
Adium is my favourite chat client, but it doesn’t seem to work well with certain modern messaging clients like Google Hangouts and Facebook Messenger.

Design and development

I do most of my design and layout work in Photoshop and Illustrator, with some help from Keynote, Preview and Pages. I’ve tried alternatives to Photoshop like Pixelmator and The GIMP, but I really depend on Adobe’s handling of type.
I write HTML and CSS in Panic’s Coda 2. I used to use Smultron and its fork Fraise, but they stopped working after the MacOS El Capitan update. I think it was El Capitan, anyway.
I do all my presentations in Keynote, though I’m experimenting with using reveal.js to make HTML-based presentations that I can host and load online. I’m very particular about typography in my presentations and don’t want to be limited to system fonts or Google Docs freebies because a computer I’ve loaded my presentation on doesn’t have my fonts installed. If I self-host my presentations I can use embedded web fonts from Typekit or Cloud.Typography.
I make custom WordPress localisations using the excellent Poedit app.
I use the MacOS colour picker as an Automator app, so I can put it in my dock and use it to sample colours and get their hex codes when I’m coding.
For tweaking XML in desktop programs and files, I use BBEdit. Both the free and paid-for versions have worked well for me.
I use self-hosted WordPress installations for most of my websites, typically with the Genesis Framework installed. Sometimes I’ll just use plain HTML/CSS, though, if I need a site with less overhead.
I’ve used DreamHost to host sites and register domains for the past eight years, and have been pretty happy with them as a company.

Productivity aids

aText is a $5 text-expanding app that allows users to type in abbreviations of commonly used words, code snippets or other text to save keystrokes. aText is similar to TextExpander and other apps, though unlike TextExpander it’s a one-time purchase and doesn’t require a subscription. I’m not anti-subscription, but I have more than enough subscriptions (Adobe Creative Cloud, Setapp, iCloud, Netflix, Amazon Prime, a few newspapers and magazines, &c.) and am not keen to add another one if I can avoid it. It seems to work well on the Mojave beta, too.
Calcbot is my preferred replacement for the official MacOS/iOS calculator, mostly because it keeps track of calculations and expressions in a way that I don’t have to hold all the numbers I’m working with in short-term memory.
I use Be Focused, a Mac- and iOS-based Pomodoro timer, to keep track of my time sometimes.
I take notes with the built-in Apple Notes app to ensure they’re synced across my computer, iPad and phone.
I use a simple Mac app, Alarm Clock 2, to wake me up every morning. I’m annoyed that Mojave is the last OS it’ll work on, though, since I believe it’s 32-bit. I’ll have to find a replacement unless Apple adds the alarm/stopwatch app from iOS to the Mac in a future MacOS release.
I’m still in search of the best to-do/reminders app; none of the ones I’ve tried have worked well with the way I think. In the meantime, I just make lists on paper or use the built-in Reminders and Calendar on my computer, phone and iPad.
I primarily use iCloud for online storage, but also use Dropbox, Box and Google Drive to share files with other people.

Miscellaneous

I like to have my user interfaces set to English (UK), French or German; if a desktop program doesn’t come in one of these languages, I’m likely to make my own custom localisation. I use logical date formats (day-month-year or year-month-day) and the 24-hour clock.
I don’t do Windows, at least not as my primary operating system. Nothing I’ve seen in recent Windows releases has made me interested in going back after eight years of being a nearly exclusive Mac user.
If I were to switch away from Apple, I’d probably use Linux, but there are too many applications that run only on the Mac, or on the Mac and Windows, that I’d have to replace. The GIMP is an inadequate substitute for Photoshop.
I’ve removed the DRM from ebooks I legally own so I can read them using Apple’s Books instead of other proprietary apps.

Typinions 1: Proxima Nova

26th August 2018 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

Mark Simonson’s Proxima Nova is an extraordinarily popular geometric sans-serif typeface, especially on sites and apps that use custom web fonts. Over the past nine years or so, it’s proliferated on the internet, primarily because of its easy availability on web-font sites like Typekit and its similarity to Tobias Frere-Jones’s Gotham, the sans-serif font used in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. While Proxima was actually designed before Gotham – Simonson started working on it in the early 90s, while Frere-Jones published Gotham in the early 2000s after creating it for GQ magazine – its meteoric rise seems to be connected with Gotham’s popularity. People and companies who used Gotham as part of their branding substituted Proxima Nova on the web for several years because the latter was available as an embeddable font, whereas Gotham wasn’t available until 2013 or 2014.

I will admit that I am not a fan of this typeface, though I like some of Simonson’s other typefaces, like Coquette, Bookmania and his brand-new Parkside. This post isn’t intended to be an attack on Simonson himself; from what I’ve seen of his work online, he’s a reasonably talented type designer who has friendly licensing policies and an excellent blog on type design and typography.

Proxima Nova feels like an unwieldy amalgamation of ideas and letterforms. The capitals on their own look good, as do many of the italic lowercase letters. The roman lowercase, however, feels more haphazard. Proxima Nova is neither controlled enough to be consistent, nor awkward enough to own its weirdnesses. Nowhere is this more evident than in the lowercase ‘a’. It’s awkwardly drawn and doesn’t seem to belong to the rest of the typeface. The letterforms in Avenir and Gotham, two similar typefaces by Adrian Frutiger and Tobias Frere-Jones respectively, have a more consistent, even rhythm than those of Proxima Nova, which can’t decide whether it should embrace its quirks or adopt a more staid, conservative form. Simonson himself has shown an ability to exhibit greater consistency within a typeface; his Muostra Nova utterly revels in its quirkiness. The awkwardness of Proxima Nova’s ‘a’ comes primarily from the abrupt transition between the stem, or the vertical line on the right-hand side, and the bowl, or the rounded portion of the letter. Gotham and Avenir make this transition smoother by using a teardrop shape for both the bowl and the negative space (counter) enclosed within the bowl. The bowl slopes gently downwards, while Proxima’s has a more severe-looking shape that would be better suited to a typeface that is more uniformly quirky like Process Type’s Colfax. The bowl feels tacked on to the stem in a rather graceless fashion.

A screenshot comparing three different sans-serif typefaces, Proxima Nova, Avenir and Gotham.

The spur of the a – the arc-shaped top portion of the letter – is also dangerously close to the bowl; there’s not enough room to breathe. Gotham and Avenir, in contrast, give just enough negative space between the spur and the bowl to make the ‘a’ look more open. The alternative character set, which swaps the bulbous two-storey a for a single-storey one, solves many of the problems in the default character set. Unfortunately, it’s far less common, possibly because accessing the alternative characters generally requires enabling an OpenType stylistic set in Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign, or selecting alternates in a web-font host’s control panel. This awkward relationship between stems, bowls and counters in Proxima Nova isn’t limited to the lowercase a, either; you can also see it in the b and several other letters, though the a is probably the most ungainly of the lot.

Proxima Nova’s ubiquity on the internet makes its design flaws more obvious, since I’m constantly encountering web articles set in it. Web designers will use it for long passages, though it’s not ideal for reading at long measures because of its inconsistent contrast compared to other typefaces in its genre. I myself find it difficult to read and will usually switch a website into reader mode on Firefox or Mobile Safari when I see it, or will turn on custom CSS in Firefox or Chrome to have the website display in a different font. I think that Proxima has the chance to become an excellent typeface, but its uneasy relationship between conservative regularity and quirky playfulness make me hesitate to recommend it. It needs to own itself, which it doesn’t.

My issues with Proxima Nova go beyond its flaws as a piece of type design. The rampant use of Proxima Nova in website body text is difficult to extricate from the increasing tendency towards boring, derivative web design that uses the same generic Bootstrap-inspired layouts. I’ve come to associate it with bland ‘modernisations’ of websites; there are countless websites that once used quirky, playful websites only to have those more original designs replaced with an identikit redesign complete with Proxima Nova, blue or other primary-coloured navigation bar, and irritatingly perky website copy. It’s part of a general tendency towards homogeneity that I find troubling, though I’ll refrain from going into detail about it in this specific post. I don’t think that Proxima Nova in and of itself is the cause of these derivative designs; rather, it is an unintentional beneficiary, as are Gotham and other geometric sans-serif typefaces that designers reach for as a sort of default. Though I doubt it was Simonson’s intent, Proxima Nova has started to become a default that designers use without thinking. It’s a victim of its own, and of Gotham’s, success. Designers think that because Proxima Nova is popular, it’s the ne plus ultra of geometric sans-serifs, even though there are thousands of equally good, or better, typefaces available on Typekit and other platforms. This is the same kind of thinking that leads non-designers to think that Times New Roman is the pinnacle of ‘serious’ typography. If you are a designer and are considering setting your next site in Proxima Nova, consider why you want to use it. Are you using it reflexively because it’s popular, or are you using it because it matches the tenor of your or your client’s website? Ignore asinine listicles that talk about the ‘top 10 fonts to use for the web’. Think about your intentions and what you and your client want to communicate.

Is Proxima Nova an Arial, a parasitic interloper that rides the coattails of a classic like Helvetica? Hardly. But its legitimacy as a type design doesn’t mean that it’s always the best choice for all design tasks. Nor does it mean that its popularity justifies its structural flaws. I’m not telling you not to use Proxima Nova – it’s not my place, and I’ve used it myself in the past – but I am telling you to pay attention and think more critically about your role as a designer when using it or any other typeface.

Linguistic archetypes

23rd August 2018 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

I’ve noticed that people who are aware of language and care deeply about the way it’s used have archetypes that serve as models for all speakers and writers of a given language. I think it’s natural for people to view a familiar or idealised form of a language as a mental default; however, acting as though one’s own linguistic archetype is actually universal can lead to thoughtless or downright racist, disablist, classist or xenophobic conclusions.

For example, the archetypical form of English for me is standard British English. This is less a case of American cultural cringe as much as it is a reflection of my own life experiences. Between the ages of 4 and 7, I lived in the UK, and consequently never really developed the sense that the American dialect was the default mode for speaking and writing English. Generally speaking, my personal language archetypes are associated with the country or countries in which a language originated. The exception is Portuguese. I live in an area with a high concentration of Brazilian immigrants, so I tend to think of a Brazilian accent as the default Portuguese-speaking accent. I don’t know enough about the differences between Brazilian and Portuguese spelling for me to have a sense of what’s archetypical and what isn’t.

I feel similarly about language families, too. When I think of an archetypical Germanic language, I think of Standard High German. I think this is in part because I lived in Germany as a teenager; if I based these archetypes on the historical changes that the Germanic languages underwent, I would be more likely to treat Dutch or the other Low German languages as archetypical. High German underwent some sound changes (the ‘High German consonant shift’) that didn’t affect other Germanic languages like English, Dutch and Swedish. For example, ‘time’ is Zeit in German, but tijd in Dutch and tid in Swedish; in the High German consonant shift, /t/ became /ts/ in some words. Something similar happened with English/Dutch water and German Wasser. Italian and Spanish are my archetypical Romance languages, though that connection makes more sense linguistically than my viewing High German as the archetypical Germanic language.

People’s archetypical languages are shaped by their cultural experiences, relationships and education. People create categories by nature. The archetypes in and of themselves aren’t a problem. Actually, I think that admitting the existence of an archetype can actually help people recognise their own biases. If, say, an American views their accent, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation standards as the default and recognises that they are influenced by their education and upbringing, they’re more likely to be sensitive to other English-speakers with different backgrounds.

People treat their own languages in general, regardless of dialect, as archetypical languages. This can lead to mistakes when learning languages or creating new ones, as the syntax, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of natural languages can vary wildly. If a Chinese-speaker creates a constructed language and isn’t aware of how Chinese differs from the thousands of other languages people speak on this planet, then their conlang is likely to just be Chinese with the serial number filed off. Through their ignorance, their brain has encoded Chinese as the way language works, rather than simply being the way Chinese works. There are countless languages that refer to their speakers as ‘The People’, or their language as ‘The Language’ or ‘The People’s Language’. German is one of them; the word Deutsch comes from an Indo-European root meaning ‘the people’, related to túath in Irish. The Diné, or Navajo, do the same, though their language is completely unrelated to German.

Things get dangerous, though, when personal archetypes become Platonic ideals of what languages should be, especially when those personal archetypes become models that are shared by a culture at large. The Académie Française falls into this trap. Strict prescriptivists have an idea of correct standards existing outside the confines of time and space; if people deviate from those standards, they are allowing a language to degenerate. This, of course, is patent nonsense; all languages change over time. People who believe that there is a single true way to use a particular language, or language generally, are likely to discriminate against people for not speaking ‘properly’. This has very real consequences: linguistic and cultural minorities, like the Ainu in Japan or indigenous peoples in the Americas, have experienced oppression and violence because the dominant culture devalues their languages. Speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) are often wrongly stereotyped as being less intelligent or articulate because of racial and linguistic prejudice, even though AAVE is consistently different from standardised American speech. It’s not just a ‘corrupt’ version of standard English; it’s a distinct dialect that combines traits of working-class British dialects, West African languages and southern American features. Speakers of signed languages, non-speaking people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and other disabled people encounter ostracism because they’re somehow not using language properly because they need to use different methods to communicate.

I disagree with the notion that language is neutral and should be treated as such, but there’s a difference between recognising that language is non-neutral and acting as though some languages or language variants are better than others. Yes, I have language archetypes in my head, but that doesn’t mean that I think that non-archetypal forms are wrong. I don’t think that there’s an external language validator who hands down rules, and am vehemently against the idea that there is a One True Way to speak.

Taking back control

21st August 2018 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

I am slowly beginning the process of moving most of my online activity to self-hosted or independent platforms—like this one!—instead of depending primarily on Twitter, Facebook and other walled gardens. I have become increasingly tired of posting on platforms that alienate their user bases.

Over the past few years, I have seen Twitter and Facebook remain intransigent in the face of calls to control the spread of fake news, conspiracy theories and hate speech on their platforms. Twitter has been especially terrible; its refusal to ban Alex Jones and InfoWars after Apple, Google/YouTube and Facebook managed to do so after public outcry, and its continued inaction in curbing the influence of Nazi and alt-right trolls on its platform, have reduced its appeal to me. These companies’ behaviour has resulted in very real consequences: the election of an unqualified, venal, extraordinarily petty buffoon to the United States presidency; the spread of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies from fake-news purveyors like Jones; and the rise of the alt-right movement and its deadly consequences in Charlottesville last year. The problem with Facebook and Twitter is that they treat speech in the same way they think a government should; however, as Derek Powazek said so eloquently in ‘Your Community Site is Not a Government’, these tech companies are private and have a responsibility to their community to curb the spread of hate speech and misinformation.

I have also grown frustrated with Twitter and Facebook’s attitudes towards third-party developers. On 16 August 2018, Twitter cut off third-party developers’ access to APIs that allowed real-time updates of Twitter content, push notifications, statistics on likes, follows and retweets, and other useful features. I’ve been using Tweetbot for iOS for the past six years. I’ve tried using Twitter’s official client. I hate it. (They also discontinued the Mac client this year, meaning that the only official way for me to post to Twitter from my computer is to use the website.) There’s no way to disable advertising; if there were, I’d gladly pay for it.

The reason why Twitter and Facebook routinely ignore users’ requests to expel Nazis, stop mistreating third-party developers and moderate their communities is that the users are ultimately not their priority. Advertisers and venture capitalists are. Twitter has become Trump’s de facto propaganda organ; Twitter management has made no efforts to stop him from posting vitriolic attacks on the ‘Fake News Media’, Democratic politicians, the NFL and his other designated enemies, even when Trump has made direct references or allusions to violence against his political rivals and detractors. If Trump weren’t so lucrative, both as a celebrity and as a political figure, he would have been banned years ago. In contrast, Microsoft, Apple and other companies that charge either wholly or in part for their services, the hardware it runs on, or both, have a greater responsibility to their paying users. Of course, this isn’t universal; publicly traded companies have fiduciary responsibilities to their stockholders that may outweigh the concerns of rank-and-file users. But then again, Facebook and Twitter are also public companies. Like Microsoft and Apple, they’re responsible to their shareholders, but their user bases are further down the list than they are for companies that accept direct payment from their users for their products and services.

It is not in Twitter or Facebook’s best interest to optimise their sites and apps for their users if they feel they can make more money by prioritising ways to sell more ads, often under the guise of wanting to provide a more ‘cohesive user experience’. A ‘cohesive user experience’ is a euphemism for shunting users to official apps that are designed to monetise content for advertisers, not to improve users’ ability to use the site. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and other social networks get away with this unscrupulous behaviour because they have positioned themselves as indispensable tools to create and maintain relationships. This is especially true for Facebook, which serves as a combination of address book, instant messenger, blog, event-planning service and sales platform for many people, including me. The presumed indispensability of networks like Facebook and Twitter allow them to get away with being slow to act when users call on them to moderate trolls, hate-speech enthusiasts and fake-news peddlers. This is why Alex Jones managed to stay on these social media platforms for so long. Jones may spew fake news, conspiracy theories and hateful bile on his social media feeds and YouTube channel, but he still makes Google, Facebook and Twitter money because people watch him. The same applies to Trump and any number of alt-right and alt-lite provocateurs whom Twitter and Facebook have not seen fit to ban. This presumed indispensability is also the reason why these networks have not prioritised users’ needs when designing their websites and apps. It also explains their hostility towards third-party developers’ attempts to address official sites’ and apps’ flaws. If Twitter and Facebook felt the impetus to prioritise user experience, then fewer people would feel the need to use third-party apps or use browser modifications to make using those networks less of a trial.

I’m tired of the Nazis, Trump and Alex Jones. I’m tired of user-hostile interfaces. I’m tired of seeing developers like Tapbots being jerked around by Twitter corporate. Because I’m tired of those things, I’m taking back some control over my digital life. While I’m not leaving Twitter or Facebook entirely—I know too many people who only use Twitter and Facebook to avoid them—I don’t want to have the totality of my online writing on those websites. I’ve had self-hosted blogs for the better part of the past fifteen years. Why not actually use them instead of keeping my writing on Twitter and Facebook?

(Note: Some of this post is based on a series of tweets I wrote on 16 August after the API change.)

The problems with authoritarians (plain-language article)

19th August 2018 by Finn Gardiner 1 Comment

(Content warning: I talk about some hurtful things in this article, like killing and discrimination.)

If you’ve read the news over the past few years, you may have heard about authoritarianism and wondered what it is. Authoritarianism is the idea that having control is more important than meeting people’s needs, telling the truth or being fair. Authoritarianism is dangerous because it thinks that letting some people have power is more important than caring for other people. Everyone should have the power to make a difference, not just a few people. Here are some facts about authoritarianism and why it’s bad.

Authoritarianism has been a problem throughout history. Historical authoritarian leaders include Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Idi Amin. Some modern leaders like Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad and Rodrigo Duterte have also acted in authoritarian ways or have said they like authoritarian thinking.
Authoritarians say things are right just because somebody says so. That somebody can be God, the government, their parents or themselves. Saying ‘Because I said so!’ is not proof. Anybody can say things, and sometimes those things can be wrong. For example, some people believe that God made the universe and everything in it less than ten thousand years ago. That’s wrong. Scientists have found rocks, fossils and other items that are millions of years old. If you want to say that something is a fact, you should prove it. You can prove things with research, stories and other kinds of evidence.
Authoritarians think that it’s OK to treat people unfairly because that’s just the way things are. They don’t think that problems like racism or sexism matter, because it’s more important to have control than it is to be fair. This is dangerous. Real people are hurt by racism, sexism and other kinds of mistreatment. The world isn’t fair, but we can still make it fairer.
Authoritarians also think that it is possible to know everything about reality. This isn’t true. We can’t know everything because the universe is always changing. Living things like plants and animals change over time to adapt to their environment. We are constantly learning new things about the universe and how it works. That’s what science is about. That’s also what being human is about. Being an intelligent species means that we can learn about the world around us and talk about what we’ve learned. We can’t know everything, but we can try to know as much as we can.
Authoritarians think they have all the answers to everyone’s questions. People may have some answers, but nobody has all the answers.
Some authoritarians think that you should do what they say, not what they do. This is because they think having control is more important than being fair or kind. Some politicians say that being gay hurts families, but these same politicians will cheat on their partners.
Authoritarians think that it is OK to punish people for not agreeing with them. In the Soviet Union, Stalin killed people or sent them to jail because they didn’t agree with him or the government. Black Americans in states with Jim Crow laws could be hurt or killed because they spoke up against their states’ laws. (Jim Crow is a nickname for laws passed in the United States that banned black people from being in the same areas as white people. Keeping people separate like this is called segregation.) Martin Luther King was killed by someone who thought Jim Crow laws were good.
Authoritarians don’t believe in civil rights. Many of them think that certain people deserve to be treated badly. Hitler killed millions of Jews and Roma because he didn’t think they were real people who deserved to live. Some people in the United States want to stop Black, Native and Latino people from voting. There are people who think that women should not have the right to vote or have jobs because they think men are smarter than women.