(Here's what I'm up to around the web…)
Published by my web software company Whitefusion, INTERSECT features articles about supporting the open web, security & privacy, UI/UX, and Ruby programming.
A blog & resource site + YouTube vlog for independent workers. Here I teach people how to embrace the free agent lifestyle and flourish as creators.
My alter ego as a producer of synthwave, chillout, and thematic electronica. Yarred combines cutting-edge DJ-style live groove production with classic keyboard playing on analog and digital synthesizers.
(The latest from The Jared White Show…)
The inaugural episode of The Jared White Show is here! We talk about the history of the web, Myst's 25th anniversary, the growth of podcasting, and so much more.
Facebook wants to become your internet service provider
Facebook and Qualcomm are working together to provide high-speed connectivity to urban areas. The goal is to provide multi-gigabytes per second speed at a lower cost. Terragraph will use Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) to replace cable or fiber connections. Subscribers will have a home access point that then broadcasts Wi-Fi to a Mac, iPad, etc. “With Terragraph, our goal is to enable people living in urban areas to access high-quality connectivity that can help create new opportunities and strengthen communities,” Yael Maguire, vice president of connectivity, Facebook.
Eating lunch at the new food court at Pioneer Place (downtown mall in #portland) and so far the ambient music playing has featured Invisible Touch by Genesis, Stepping Out by Joe Jackson, and Under African Skies by Paul Simon. Ah, the sounds of my childhood…
What a cool walking bridge. Favorite new place for a jog in #Hillsboro (in the Orenco Woods Nature Park).
Excellent news! The Jared White Show, a new weekly podcast I’ve had in the works, is officially launching next week! If all goes well, the first episode will be out Monday, May 21st. I have a second related announcement to make, but you’ll have to wait until the episode drops to find out all about it. 😎🎙
Here's why I believe practicing mindfulness is still valuable even when you're living the good life. Hint: it's more than just a cure for depression.
Jenkins Estate Park, south of #Hillsboro, OR.
Jekyll’s Hidden Depths
As anyone who has used Jekyll for a while knows, it’s capable of so much more than first meets the eye. Jekyll is an amazingly powerful content system right out of the box. But with a few added plugins or creative uses of existing features, it can do almost anything imaginable. I’ve built a wide variety of websites on top of Jekyll over the last couple of years and I still feel like I’m learning new tricks every day.
If you’re curious about the technical aspects of how I used #Jekyll to build this #website, you’ll want to read this article.
Going through a bit of a rough patch this month…reason isn’t important, but what is important is just how much I’m having to wrestle with my brain to stay positive and focused. I almost had a full-blown panic attack earlier this week because I let worry and dark ruminations get the better of me. But I’m making headway by challenging myself to get more sleep, spend more time on exercise, and do something creative and fun every day to recharge my batteries. Living in the now beats battling fictional tomorrows any day! #mindfulness
As easy as 1,2,3…
In every day life we all do our calculations, whether for the taxman, our purchases, paying the household bills or in some academic discipline, using the place value decimal number system. It consists of just ten symbols (numerals) – 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 – with which we can express any number, of any size that we may require. The value of the symbol changes according to its position – place – within the number that we write. This is an incredibly powerful and efficient method of writing numbers and the algorithms that it uses also make it a very efficient system for conducting calculations.
What a facinating read about the history of our number writing system! It’s so easy to take how we represent numeric values and how we do even basic math for granted; we forget that this was all invented at certain times by certain people hundreds or thousands of years ago.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a podcast! Coming soon to a player near you, The Jared White Show is a curated celebration of the artform that is the web; a weekly perspective on how individuals have the power to spark open and free communication and innovation online. Stay tuned for the first episode release date!
I’m still processing how I feel about the adrenaline-infused spectacle that is Avengers: Infinity War. Without giving away any spoilers, the film starts off at 100 MPH and barely lets up the gas over the next 2 hours and 36 minutes. Now this isn’t all that shocking given the way action movies get made these days, but in this case it really does feel quite intense. I think it’s because this truly is the culmination of 10 years of Marvel films. We’ve grown to love these characters who have been presented and developed in so many interesting and creative ways throughout the 18 stories that preceded Infinity War. Seeing what they go through in this massive film and what they’re up against in Thanos, a villain of surprising nuance and emotional depth, is the ride of a lifetime.
While I am a huge Star Wars fan through and through, I must admit that, as a millennial, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is today’s top-tier franchise that I’ve most bonded with. Star Wars is awesome but it’s a story that came out of my parents’ generation. The MCU is my story. (Yes, I know most of the actual characters and some of the plot lines are from comic books that originated decades ago. But to me, having never read the comics, everything feels new and fresh.)
I’ll just say one more thing about the movie (which isn’t a spoiler, I promise): I was so happy with what they did with Doctor Strange in this story. Not only did he get a fair amount of screen time, he played a pivotal role on several occasions in progressing the plot forward. Benedict Cumberbatch is in top form (when is he ever not?!), and since Doctor Strange is my favorite character in the MCU (and his origin story film one of my favorite movies of all time), I was quite pleased about this.
If you haven’t seen Avengers: Infinity War yet, what are you waiting for? Go! Go now! It’s an historical event in film history we’re all going to be talking about for a long time to come. #movies #scifi
When we have difficulties helping our children learn new skills or cope with the tumult of everyday life, it's tempting to want to blame ourselves. But we can choose to see the learning opportunity inherent in every emotional moment.
GitHub offices redesigned
Rapt Studio’s architects jettisoned the space’s man-cave décor and replaced it with an eclectic mix of modern furniture. In lieu of the trendy shipping-container cubicles that had been there since 2015, there are now cozy spaces designed like residential living rooms. They’ve also built a room for nursing mothers, a prayer room, and gender-inclusive bathrooms. In the library, there are even sculptures of female trailblazers in computing. While GitHub’s workforce is still predominantly male, the redesign reflects CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath’s ambition to foster a more inclusive workforce.
My god, the ergonomics of these newly designed spaces look absolutely terrible. We’ve known for decades now that having a small screen and keyboard on a table where you have to crane your neck down all the time (aka how most people use laptops in open offices and cafés) promotes a horrible posture and will cause major structural problems over time. Those weird bed/pod things litterly make my spine hurt just looking at them.
Where the hell can you just sit at a desk, look at a big screen directly in front of you (let’s say an nice Retina iMac), have a decent keyboard try at elbow level, and use a chair that allows for proper setup of lumbar support, arm rests, mesh back for muscle cooling, etc.? I would never work full-time in a place like this. Never.
I’m Sorry I Criticized You, Apple. You Win
This is a time when an entire driverless car industry is trying to convince the world that its products are safe before it can even come up with convincing stats — or prevent deadly accidents like the one in Tempe, Arizona, earlier this year. This is a time when Google is trying to subvert new privacy regulations to turn them against content producers. A time when Facebook, blasted by media and regulators for ignoring people’s privacy concerns, starts a dating service which will collect people’s most intimate data.
This is a time when companies whose innovations are more intrusive than useful, more gimmicky than problem-solving, operate with business models that either burn investors’ cash or turn the users into products.
At a time like this, Apple is a rock of common sense, sobriety, dignified engineering supremacy, prudent financial and supply chain management, effective marketing, and customer-oriented retailing. It’s a traditional business that does most things well, demands a high price for it, and receives that high price. With Apple, what you see is largely what you get, and when it’s not, the company will not just apologize but offer a fix.
While I think Leonid Bershidsky is overblowing the “boring maturity” angle here, there’s a valid point to be made. #Apple is taking its role of being a primary purveyor of computing devices and online services seriously, and is doing its utmost to design products that provide top-of-the-line performance, usability, security, and #privacy — which is what users actually want. So much of what many other tech companies put their efforts into is not what users want…it’s what those companies and their investors want. It’s definitely time we as consumers stopped accepting whatever it is that Silicon Valley hands to us, and maintain a more critical eye towards whatever the Next Big Thing is that somebody’s peddling.
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Facebook’s working on several significant internet connectivity solutions right now. Terragraph is their newest experiment. My simple take on these initiatives is this: as long as #Facebook ensures their ISP division only provides a “dumb pipe” that allows all internet traffic through without modification or prioritization, then I think their efforts are a good thing. But somehow I suspect what we’ll really get is internet that’s free because it’s subsidized by Facebook ad tech and prioritizes fast access to Facebook.