southsamurai's recent activity

  1. Comment on What’s the oldest book you own and how did you get it? in ~books

    southsamurai
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    I have a first edition of Silas Marner. It was given to me by my great aunt many, many years ago. She received it as a gift herself, though who she got it from varies by when she told the story....

    I have a first edition of Silas Marner.

    It was given to me by my great aunt many, many years ago. She received it as a gift herself, though who she got it from varies by when she told the story. My great aunt was a rather wonderful woman. One of her most loved traits was never telling the same story the same way twice. She didn't make things up really, just had fun with details.

    One version of the book gifting was a birthday present from her uncle (probably the truth based on what my grandmother has said). But the variations on that include it being given to her at different ages, or in one version that the book was given to her after being stolen from a private collection.

    Another story line had it being gifted by a long lost lover named George. Her implication while telling it was that the author was her lover. The author died nearly forty years before she was born, but that didn't seem to bother her. She would claim with a straight face that she was 29 every year. When she passed she was a few months from 100.

    Don't get me wrong, she wasn't lying. She just chose to tell stories that were more fun than reality. She never claimed any of them were true. She might as well have had "based on a true story" tattooed on her head lol. The most basic facts were always accurate. The events happened. Just not in this leg of the pants of time.

    And since not only did she have fun telling the stories, but everyone had fun hearing them, nobody really minded never having the exact truth.

    So nobody ever got tired of her telling the same stories over and over either. She'd sit there, pretty as a picture, dressed to the nines with perfect makeup. She'd have a cup of coffee (never a mug, mugs were for commoners), sit it in the saucer between sips. She'd have a Salem cigarette lightly held between two fingers. And then she'd spin yet another yarn out of the threads of memory and imagination.

    Alas, I've carried on the tradition within the family. I'm not as fluid with it as she was, and the younger generation rolls their eyes more than mine did, but we have fun with it still. I've told no less than ten versions of my first hunting trip with my grandfather over the years. The only things that remain the same are the tree stand, my grandfather, and my fumble fingers slipping when I tried to lower the rifle to half cock and sending a round into the air. Everything else changes each time I tell it. The weather, how high the tree stand was, the presence of an actual deer that took off running from right under the stand, etc.

    She really was an incredible woman

    2 votes
  2. Comment on App? in ~tildes

    southsamurai
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    Apps are sort of important. When you get multiple devs working on their own version of how they think it should be presented, you get innovations. Those innovations may be purely cosmetic, or they...

    Apps are sort of important.

    When you get multiple devs working on their own version of how they think it should be presented, you get innovations.

    Those innovations may be purely cosmetic, or they can be a reason to use something like reddit or tilde.

    For example, desktop Reddit is a hot mess even with RES most of the time. Once you're subscribed to a few dozen subs, navigation between them is cumbersome. Even multis only help a little. The same can be said of the mobile site, only without the advantages of RES.

    But then you get the incredible array of Android apps. There are a solid dozen that provide anything from a nearly desktop interface to highly customized ones like slide, sync, boost, joey, etc.

    Most of those shine in making using the service more fluid for a mobile device. Having markdown shortcuts in comment/post screens alone is a major time saver. Then you get things like tabbed views, built in media management, custom filters, improved search ability, etc, etc.

    IOS has fewer stellar examples, but for both android and iOS, the integration into the rest of the device is so much smoother.

    For myself, most of the apps also use fewer resources than browsers. That means better SOT during use. For amoled displays, having a proper true black theme can give a major advantage in battery use.

    A lot of things that the internet offers is being used on mobile devices. Communication in particular should be mobile friendly.

    That doesn't mean tilde itself needs to make an app, just that the API already planned is important.

    4 votes