Coincidental Serendipity

Coincidental Serendipity

September 20, 2024

Hello! It's time for another weekly newsletter from your regular local combination Linux Bro & abnormal dickhead!

-[ Consume ]-
💣

YouTube nudged me towards a seven minute clip from Computer Chronicles on the Interface Studies channel. The clip shows artist and graphic designer Susan Kare demonstrate some of the iconography in the original Macintosh. I found this delightful, as I have a real soft spot for the low-res, monochrome design of the early Mac.

I hadn't seen the Interface Studies channel before, and I initially thought it might just be a channel re-uploading old content for clicks. However, the pinned comment on the above video links to their work - History of The Graphical User Interface (GUI): A Wonderful Curse. I'm only seven minutes into this two-hour video essay. I'm enjoying it, and you might too.

Further, YouTube then pointed me to a talk by Susan Kare from Letterform Archive in 2019 titled Notes on Icons and Design with Susan Kare, which is trip down memory lane, punctuated with interesting design tips.

I foresee many more Susan Kare & icon design video recommendations.

Rusty Pythons

I've previously mentioned here and on the podcast that I'm trying to reach for Python rather than Bash when throwing together project prototypes or useful utilities.

Recently, I've cloned, built, and run a few Python projects to learn from and noticed an inconsistency. When setting up Python virtual environments, some people use .venv (a hidden directory), and others use venv to store the environment. This made me curious.

So I started a poll asking which virtual environment directory option Python developers prefer. Obviously I got people telling me to Google it, or educating me on what dot-files are in Unix. But I also got some sensible replies, including recommendations for Poetry, which we use at work, so I've heard of it, but not used it yet in personal projects.

I also got some suggestions for using uv, which I'd never heard of before. By some coincidence while filing a bug in the snapcraft storefront, I stumbled on this issue which happens to mention the Talk Python Podcast Mastodon Account, whose latest episode is an interview with Charlie Marsh, developer of uv.

I do love a bit of coincidental serendipity in my life. I haven't listened yet, but I plan to this weekend.

You’ll have had your tea

Scrolling through rage bait central, Mark Zuckerberg's redemption device, Threads, I stumbled on a reply by old friend from the LUGRadio days, neuro answering a question about Scottish greetings with "you’ll have had your tea".

This reminded me of the old Radio 4 panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, in which comedy legends Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden frequently break into their "Hamish & Dougal" characters.

Little did I know, there was a spin-off featuring their Hamish & Dougal characters called "You'll Have Had Your Tea: The Doings of Hamish and Dougal". Sadly, the BBC Website shows no episodes available for download.

I will have my tea

Apropos of nothing, this week I asked on Mastodon, Threads, and BlueSky if there was a better torrent client for downloading a "Linux ISO" than my long-time partner in crime, rTorrent.

I got the usual "build your own ISO", "just use wget", and "download in the browser" from those missing the subtext. However, I expected the following responses: Deluge and Transmission. A regular mentioned in the newsletter, Terence Eden, did usefully educate me that one can leave rTorrent running and just drop .torrent files in the folder, which it automatically picks up. Nice!

Also, I'm mildly sad nobody commented on my (probably obvious) troll in the screenshot attached to the social posts above.

-[ Comment ]-
Introducing $PRODUCT_NAME $REL_NO

Last week I mentioned a forty-four-second-long The new Windows Terminal trailer. This week GNOME 47 "Denver" was released. Almost every GNOME release has an accompanying short trailer published on the GNOME YouTube Channel. This week, "Introducing GNOME 47" was released right on cue.

I have a keen personal and professional interest in open source product promotion so I like to ~~unnecessarily~~ ~~over~~ analyse this type of content.

Over the last three years or so, GNOME has used a consistent (but constantly evolving and improving) delivery style. It consists of a punchy tune, accompanying rendered footage of computers running GNOME desktop, first-party and community applications, and highlights of new features and settings. There's typically a nod to the volunteers and broader community in there. They all finish with "GNOME $REL_NO" and "release.gnome.org/$REL_NO".

It struck me that in the latest one was a lot heavier on animation and lighter on wording, letting the video speak for itself, rather than overuse of text. This got me wondering how punchy text and messaging have changed over the years.

So, I watched all of the GNOME "Introducing" videos. Here's the on-screen text from each video. Obviously I'm taking these completely out of context where you're not seeing the animation, rendering and imagery. It's interesting (to me, at least) anyway.

Introducing GNOME 47 (17K views, 126 comments) - "More Refinement, More Fun, More Progress, More Community" (8 words)
Introducing GNOME 46 (120K views, 293 comments) - "After the wait, let's celebrate!, More Apps, More Refinement, More Convenience, More Performance, Thanks to volunteers, and supporters like you!" (20 words)
Introducing GNOME 45 (129K views, 376 comments) - "Presenting, A Better, GNOME, For, Work, Play, Home, Fun, For, Everyone!, Unified Themes, Keyboard Backlight Controls, Privacy Controls, Visible Columns, Loupe, Snapshot, Maps, and More, For You, For Me, For Us" (33 words)
Introducing GNOME 44 (148K views, 409 comments) - "The Time, Has Come, New Settings Design, Easily View Background Apps, Quickly Access Bluetooth Devices, New Features for your Apps, New Expandable Folder Design, Community Apps, Community Support, 🖤, Get Ready, Get Set" (33 words)
Introducing GNOME 43 MIA
Introducing GNOME 42 (161K views, 679 comments)- "Your free desktop, Just got a whole lot, Cooler, System Wide, Dark Mode, Improved Screen Capture, and Recording, Streamlined Interface, Powerful Text Editing, Better File Browsing, Faster Everything, The future is better, When we build it together" (37 words)
Introducing GNOME 41 (137K views, 479 comments) - "Welcome, to, GNOME 41, Freedom just got better, Discover Apps, Multitask, Last Longer, Connect, Now faster and smoother, and much more" (21 words)
Introducing GNOME 40 (190K views, 674 comments) - "Say hello to, GNOME 40, Modern, Fast, Open, Beautiful, Community-built, Designed to set you free, Search, Launch, Organize, Expand, Intuitive gestures, Powerful shortcuts, GNOME, is for everyone, Work, Browse, Code, Watch, Plan, Communicate, Create, Play, Unleash your computer, Regain your privacy and freedom, With GNOME 40, the future belongs to you" (51 words)

Incidentally at 0m26s into the Introducing GNOME 40 video, you'll see an interesting render of a keyboard layout. The biggest enter key I've ever seen (yes, even by UK keyboard layout standards), and strange Fn key placement.

The older videos from 3.38 through 3.12 are more relaxed, less punchy and longer-form narrated affairs, rather than the punchy attention-grabbing style, commonly used today.

If we analyse the word count trend using linear regression, the next three videos will only have 10, 5, and 0 words respectively.

I am looking forward to the zero-worded "Introducing GNOME 50" video with eager anticipation!

-[ Collateral ]-
A link or two

Thanks for reading.

-- popey

You are receiving this email because you have been subscribed to the popey newsletter. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Newsletters may contain 'smart' Amazon links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

EOF