#thinkonthings

[faranae]

For the love of Frick, if you compute in a dark/dim room please hook up a light to illuminate the wall behind your screen. It doesn't have to be the sun! Just a fraction of your screen's brightness, really.

If you want to be very fancy you can refer to it as "bias lighting" but that's going to bring up a lot of expensive specialty products and buzzwords and tech specs if you look it up. A $2 USB light from the dollar store can do just fine; Just look for anything that disperses/softens the light instead of shining a harsh beam.

The reason for this: Eye fatigue!

When you only have dark surroundings and a bright screen in front of you, your eyes have to do a lot of extra work adjusting all the time to such a harsh contrast. Adding even a dim light against the wall makes it easier on them, adding a step in the middle.

(Visual artists: You know how it's easier on your eyes to work for longer periods on a grey canvas instead of white? Similar concept!)

Before I go, one more tip!

The 20/20/20 trick is worth remembering to prevent and ease eye strain: Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

(That's about 6 meters for those of us who measure things in Normal, but "20/6/20 trick" really isn't all that catchy now, is it?)

[faranae]

A bit of trivia: The "Warrant Canary"

Have you heard the phrase "like a canary in a coal mine"?

Back in the old-timey days, they'd sometimes use small and delicate animals as an early warning system for gasses and such down in the mines: If their canary suddenly died, there was unseen danger and the workers knew they had to get out of there.

Ever notice how the footer on the OTW's website seems oddly long and strangely specific? "The Organization for Transformative Works has not received any National Security Letters or FISA court orders, and we have not been subject to any gag order by a FISA court."

That's the OTW's canary!

If they are ever served with a warrant in this manner to give up information, they're most definitely going to be gagged by the court that ordered it to prevent tipping off the entities being investigated. If this ever happens, that text is no longer accurate, so it will have to be removed from the site's footer.

AKA: If that line ever disappears from the site, the canary has died and there's unseen trouble. It's a way to sound the alarm, even if they're gagged by the courts. Quite a few websites have (or had) one, if you know where to look!

Neat, huh?

[faranae]

Friendly reminder to keep an eye out: The astroturfing attempts are ramping up.

(It doesn't work as well here as they'd like; Tumblr is a monster they have yet to conquer, and most of the time they stick out like a sore thumb and get called out as bad faith actors.)

What is astroturfing? It's when an entity with an agenda hires people/bot farms to pose as members of the public, pretending to be a regular person. They join conversations, ask "innocent" questions, and comment on posts with the express goal of nudging public opinion in a way that is favorable to their goal.

Basically, it's planting their own people in the crowd to make their company/product/country/opinion (etc, etc) look better.

"Many people are saying..."

[faranae]

I remember you once said you have a very fast typing speed! I've been wanting to increase mine but I'm not sure if those typing teaching programs are as effective on adults as they would be if I had used them when I was a kid. Do you have any tips?

As always, this is all advice from personal experience and I do not advise you take me 100% on my word because other folks could do this way better. I say "you" a lot but usually mean "in my experience". If you know me at all you'll be prepared for the tangents, if not this is your warning. ♥

Okay so this is actually a really interesting one for me, because I had a sort of.... Odd upbringing with regards to computers and typing. I was raised on my Nana's typewriter, frequently getting in trouble for doing "typed" school assignments without a computer. (She blessedly put a stop to that once she realized why I kept getting docked marks.)

We were formally taught using AlphaSmarts. Some folks from my generation will probably recognize these bad boys:

Needless to say, they weren't exactly stellar when it comes to training for WPM (words-per-minute). I digress.

Your concern about programs not working as well with adults as kids? Nah. This isn't like learning a new language, it's more like... Learning the controls in a video game. It's all hand-eye coordination! :D If I'm being honest I didn't learn how to type properly until I was a full-ass adult. I used to chicken-peck at the keys.

Just like speed in any skill (and I know, I know saying that's like a broken record) a good amount of practice goes a long way, and the way some folks train for speed won't work for everyone.

There's this tradeoff between speed and accuracy to consider with different kinds of typing.

You can type very quickly when going off the cuff, for example, because your brain is focused more on the words you're putting out in the moment rather than trying to process source text and translate it to your fingers. However, you're way more likely to make errors if you're not used to the speed yet.

In contrast, typing with a reference tends to go slower because of that extra layer of disconnect and increased focus on accurately duplicating your source material. Hand-eye coordination! :D

As an example: My speed going off the cuff is actually only about 90 WPM nowadays because of some medication side-effects, a bit higher when I'm really in a groove, whereas my speed working off a reference is around 60 WPM. Huge difference right? But both of these are at around 95% accuracy because the change in speed compensates for (what to me is) higher difficulty.

And I don't touch-type. Purists be damned.

(Pardon these explanations, they're not meant to be patronizing or anything, just accessibility for those who might not have known.)

Touch-typing is frequently described as the preferable, "best" way to type fast and efficiently. That's where your fingies are always on the home row (ASDF) and you just kinda clakkaclak without looking down.

Fast? Yeah.

Less errors? Sorta.

Potentially hard as shit to learn when you're not exactly neurotypical? Depending on if your brain is more chaotic or structured, yeaaaahhhhh...

I'm hybrid rather than a touch-typist, which means that while my hands remain in a mostly fixed place on the board (WASD for me, because gamer-brain), I still glance down occasionally to get my bearings as I go. It does lower my reaction time and speed, but touch-typing for me is an ugly error-prone mess because my hands 'slip' and I dysty yu[omh pmr lru pgg start typing one key off.

Depending on which method you use, you'll get there. Don't be afraid to look down and reorient yourself on the keys, and focus on accuracy first. If you get the accuracy down-pat, the speed's gonna follow.

So... Long story short, I guess that's my advice?

[faranae]

Experience (A scenario)

There’s this creative you really loved years ago. I mean you really adored their work. Maybe they were even one of the reasons you got into the craft yourself, even if you told yourself you’d “never be that good”. 

But then, as you got more experienced with that same craft, you started to notice glaring laziness or flaws in said creative’s work. Not stylistic choices so much as mistakes in the sort of fundamental areas you’d cover in the most basic of introductory classes. 

Maybe you’re too respectful to point it out when critique was never asked for, but you know it’s there. You see others criticize them, often politely, in such a way you now notice they always have. The creative ignores them, again, as they always have. 

But now, every time you see their work you’re excitedly like “Oh! It’s them!!” for about five seconds before your critical brain kicks in. You look at whatever they’ve posted and just... You feel almost upset -- no, that’s the wrong word -- disappointed that despite having so much more experience than your noob-self they can’t see where the problems lie. 

The almost-but-not-quite anger that flares up when you eventually put aside your stale idolatry and realize it’s not that they don’t see it; They simply don’t care. Why focus on self-improvement when their current work accrues hundreds of thousands of comments, likes, and shares? Why fix what sells when they can keep giving the bare minimum and make a paycheque doing it? 

It’s conflicting, because on one hand you feel jaded; Does that critical eye, that new opinion on something you used to enjoy, make you a worse person?

It doesn’t have to. 

On that other hand you can look back at your personal studies and know: Your skill set may not be on par with theirs yet, but it may be eventually. And when it inevitably catches up, the moment will be short-lived; Unlike your former idol you have the awareness to never stop learning, so you’ll keep moving upwards past that point. 

So I suppose despite not being idolized anymore, that creative still fills a similar purpose: A goal to reach and eventually surpass. 

Your former idol is now a peer and rival in your eyes. 

Good luck. 

[faranae]

I just wanted to drop by and say I really like your writing! You repeat yourself but not in a bad way, I don't know how to explain it but it works? Anyway have a nice day!

Aww, thank you! Stylized or deliberate repetition is one of my favorite literary devices to utilize, admittedly. It shows up a lot in my work, even when I’m not aiming to do it intentionally. 

Something I learned very early on is that while diversity in sentence length and format is an essential tool to keep writing interesting, it’s also what we’re used to reading. Repeating elements or themes tend to stick out more; our minds emphasize those fragments even if we don’t realize it at the time. 

Every person reads text differently: 

Reading with their own mental voice, often at the speed they would normally speak aloud (subvocalization);

As above, but with inflection and tone regardless of pacing (narrative);

Imprinting key elements of the text without actually taking in all the words at all (skimming);

Converting text to images and concepts on the fly as they don’t think in words (visualization);

Straight-up reading aloud to themselves;

And Gods only know how many others! 

I find that placed correctly, repetition sets the tempo of a piece. It can force the reader to follow certain “beats” as they read, similar to how artists might stretch or skew comic panels to imply the passage of time or the importance of a moment. 

On that same note, changing an established repeating element is jarring; Pulling the reader out of a false sense of security, demolishing the brain’s illogical assumption that it’s been following a set pattern. 

Even if the reader hasn’t noticed the repetition, 90% of the time their brain has slipped into the pattern and it will sound the alarm when something is suddenly “off”. It yanks the reader’s notice to certain lines or events, triggering feelings of unease or even relief depending on the context.

It’s such a fun tool to utilize in different ways!