onfocus

Last night Portland Cello Project played here in Corvallis and I got to hear them play Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens. Even with Halloween over it feels like the perfect soundtrack to the world right now.

The Awl recently had a great article about this song: What’s Spookier Than Saint-Saëns's 'Danse Macabre'? That opening dissonant tritone sounds like the devil. Hopefully playing and hearing that diabolus in musica has exorcised some of the evil in the world and we can get to a new soundtrack soon.

Friday Link Party!

Developing Things

• Benjamin Button Reviews The New MacBook Pro (A+ apple snark)
• WordPress Without Shame
• Taking PHP Seriously
• Awesome Node.js projects
• Refreshing The Verge (note amp and fb instant juggernauts)
• Here's to more HTTPS on the web (won't hurt pagerank, honest)
• Web fonts, boy, I don't know
• Five Ways to Cultivate Gratitude at Work

Politics

• The real Clinton email scandal...
• Election Profit Makers Mixtape (D+9)
• Samantha Bee: 100% Valid Theory

Online Community

• kottke.org memberships (support kottke!)
• How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth
• Trump bots are out-tweeting Clinton bots 7 to 1 (is your crazy uncle even real?)

Extra Extra

• musicForProgramming
• Improved Initiative (neat D&D combat tracker)
• Hamilton Mixtape (Dec 2, 2 tracks now)

Time for Friday links.

Developing Things

• The Mercury Web Parser (scraping for content)
• Configuring DNS Tips (your TTL is too low)
• Parsing JSON is a Minefield (everything is vague to a degree you do not realize...)

Good News

• The NYT buying Wirecutter and Sweethome (mathowie on what the media missed)
• A State That Takes Voting Seriously (Oregon voting is the best)
• GifCities
• Wikipedia and Internet Archive fixing one million broken links (cool URIs do change)

I Wish People Would Just Blog Already

• Vine Lament by @samsanders
• Management Advice by @marcprecipice
• A Tale of Discovery by @mwichery

Online "Community"

• Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race
• Important News about Vine

Extra Extra

• The "432 Hz vs. 440 Hz" conspiracy theory
• Rod of Asclepius vs. Caduceus
• Best of Luck with the Wall

If you're like me, this site has become your primary social network. Whether it's the hours you've spent arguing in the comments section, the days poring through the archives looking for hidden gems, or even those few minutes on the about page trying to answer the question, "Why is this here?" you've come to expect the best and are often delighted beyond expectation. Yes, all of these things are true, and more.

So I was perplexed the other day by an exchange I had with a friend. My online buddy casually messaged, "What do you use for your blog?" I typed back, "Why, PHP and MySQL, my good friend!" He responded, "You wrote your own thing?" I said, "Indeed! Would you like the code?" His final reply was like a punch in the gut: "No one has time for that. I'll use Medium."

No one has time for that. I'll use Medium.

Let that sink in. I knew in my heart that couldn't be true. What does Medium have that onfocus hasn't? And then it hit me like a second, more forceful punch in the gut: hearts. Medium has hearts.

I didn't get mad. I started building. And as of today, onfocus has hearts. At the bottom of every post is the option to click a heart symbol. What does clicking the heart symbol do? It fills in the heart so that it goes from being the outline of a heart to a solid heart. What does clicking the heart symbol mean? That's a question that each onfocus reader must answer for themselves.

I expect this feature to become the very pulse of this site, driving the blood (data) filled with rich oxygen to the vital organs (server) and then carrying it (clicks) away to the liver (apache logs) for detoxification (pageviews).

Who has time for what now?

Apple is removing the Escape key from their new MacBook Pro. This is worse than removing floppy drives, CD drives, and headphone jacks combined. If you're like me you still use vi every day. Having to toggle virtual buttons constantly would force me to move to some sort of (gasp!) GUI editor.

I guess there's no stopping progress. I'd probably attach an external mechanical keyboard to one of those laptops anyway. (If they still have USB ports.) Don't get me started on laptop keyboard key switches.