As I mentioned a long time ago
I am using Pelican for publishing
my blog. I recently did an upgrade which broke the syntax highlighting, and
I thought I should take a short time to explain how to fix it because
I couldn't find a solution anywhere.
The problem: it used to be the case that you could write your code like this
and it would do what you'd expect:
```
:::python
print('Hello world')
```
But since some version this syntax is no longer valid, resulting in a plainly
visible syntax identifier and the wrong colors being used in the highlighting:
:::python
print('Hello world')
The solution is simple: change to the other style for writing code in Markdown,
like so (note the leading spaces):
:::python
print('Hello world')
And that solves the issue.
I shouldn't forget to mention that this change forced me to re-indent all of my
code samples: the reason I was using the triple backquotes format was because it
lets me indent at the 0-th column, while the new syntax forces me to indent
everything with four leading spaces. And you know what happens with Python
code when you accidentally miss four spaces, i.e., one indentation? It breaks
in marvelous and unexpected ways!
Ensuring that every single line of code was properly re-indented was not a
fun task, but a necessary one nonetheless.
Which brings me to my final point. I thought I was used to the whole
"indentation has meaning" thing, but I have to say: only after using Rust
at the end of last year
and going back to braces to delimit code blocks did I realize how much I've
missed them.
Remember this post where I complained
that the music industry won't take my money? Well, it's that time of year again.
As you may remember from following me on Mastodon,
I bought an Alexa, set it up in Spanish, and almost went insane
due to how bad it was. So I did what every normal person would do in this case
and I gifted to my mom.
This Alexa slept in an Argentinean drawer for a long time, until one day I
finally convinced my family to stop worrying about breaking it.
Today it works mostly as a voice-activated music player for my nieces.
We have established before that I am an idiot, and
because I'm an idiot I decided to set up Spotify (with a family plan) instead
of Apple Music. I already have a rocky situation with Spotify,
which is why I am not shocked at all to learn that, just like Amazon and Warner
before them, Spotify will not take my money:
- I cannot pay for my mom's plan because my card is German and the account is
not. And the device's IP is obviously in Argentina.
- I cannot use an Argentinean credit card, because I don't have one.
- I cannot use the other available methods because they require me to
physically go to a store in another continent.
- I cannot pay with a gift card - even suggesting this as a possible feature
will get your request closed without review.
- I can try to set the account to a German one, but as the tech support
representative would put it, "you can give it a try, however that is
something we are unable to guarantee that will work". Also, I fear this
may cause Alexa to start speaking in German, and my mom won't be amused by
that.
So once again I am trying to give a company money -- no, scratch that: I
am trying to give a company money THAT'S WORTH MORE THAN THE MONEY THEY WANT
(Argentinean pesos are not super hot right now), and yet they won't listen to
reason. The Spotify forums are full of threads
where the best answer you'll get is a "Community Legend" saying that
it sucks to be you.
The most likely end of this story is that I'll wire some money over
Western Union and one of my relatives will go to a store to pay the bill.
My time will be wasted, I'll lose some money in the exchange, my relative's
time will be also wasted, and Spotify will receive money in a currency that's
devaluating at a 10% monthly rate.
Great job, Spotify.
I originally envisioned this post as a two-part brain dump, but then I realized
that the type of people interested in libraries are also the type of people who
aren't bothered by long text. So this post will be longer than usual.
Now that we are almost a quarter into the 21st century it is perhaps time to
have the talk: what do we do with our public libraries?
I'd like to start by pointing out that I love libraries. I love the feeling of
being surrounded by books, picking one of them at random and reading a couple
pages -- sometimes I put the book back after a few seconds, and sometimes I rush
to the nearest chair and remain there until it's dark outside. Having said that,
I also realize that I'm only focusing on what libraries are instead of what
they could be.
Part I: books
Physical books are awesome: paper is relatively inexpensive, lasts a long time,
doesn't hurt your eyes, can survive some natural disasters, requires no
electricity, an can be easily recycled if a book is really bad. Having said
that, paper is also heavy, flammable, and duplicating its content takes work.
A book's physicality is both its blessing and its curse. The New York Society
Library acquires 4800 books a year, meaning
that they also need a plan for getting rid of
4800 books a year. What happens to those books is a touchy subject. History is
full of brilliant artists who didn't get recognized during their time, but
90% of all books are crap.
How to strike a balance between both extremes is a full-time job.
I am a fan of physical books. But I wouldn't be honest if I didn't consider
that maybe I like them just because that's what I grew up with, the same
way my dad's coworkers rejected computers because a calculator was all they
ever needed. And I am willing to bet that, about a hundred years
ago, someone somewhere must have rejected cars for being cold and boring in
comparison to the horse they brushed and cuddled every day.
It isn't hard to imagine a library without physical books. You would simply show
up to the reception desk, pick a tablet (or bring your own), sit in one of the
multiple available couches (with all the books gone, there's plenty room for
them), and browse the virtual catalog. No need for queues, no book needs ever
be thrown away, and you could even do it from the comfort of your house.
(Note that "don't throw anything away" sounds suspiciously similar to hoarding,
but we won't get into that today)
But this is where I worry: why stop there? If you can check out books from
anywhere, why even have a building? Just make it a webpage that everyone can
access. All you need to do is add Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM) and
you no longer need to worry about people making unauthorized copies and/or lending
your books to non-members. It is also a very convenient way of getting rid of
problematic books: one simple command and voilà!, the book is gone from every
library in the country. And as a plus, you
don't need to fight anymore with those pesky librarians who refuse to hand over
library records
without a court order.
Which touches on an important point: that if you were to invent the concept of a
library today, you would be labeled a pirate and sued.
A library is an inconvenient institution: it is not run for profit,
it facilitates copyrighted material, and it provides access to dangerous ideas
to anyone.
If I were me, I would be scared of tinkering with such an important institution
and risk breaking it forever.
Part II: activities
Whenever I think about what an ideal library would look like, I always come back
to the same example: the Vancouver Public Library.
If all you had was a VPL card and time, you could learn music theory, learn how
to play an instrument (which you can borrow on the fourth floor),
record a podcast with your progress in the recording booths,
design an album cover in their computers (don't know how? there's a book for
that), and eventually release your album.
Not many other institution offer this much knowledge for free.
The VPL (and others like this, such as the Cologne
Library)
go straight to the core of a different concept of library: not a
place to store books, but rather a place to explore ideas. And while in theory
you could also do that with a virtual library, I wouldn't discount the power of
moving your physical body somewhere. Once you are inside the library, a part of
you knows that you are there with a purpose.
No one I know associates libraries with activities, but they definitely
associate them with the idea of a safe, quiet place to study.
Which is, once again, a blessing and a curse: the space you need for your
activities is space you take away from the books. And just as important for this
discussion, it is space: if you have tried to rent even a moderately sized
empty room you'll know that it doesn't come cheap.
Perhaps I am conflating too many ideas. Perhaps the world doesn't needs a
library-makerspace-coworking space. And yet, the idea of a Library as a
"Temple of knowledge" is all my nerd brain ever wanted.
Part III: the Metaverse and Zoom meetings
This is the part where Mark Zuckerberg shows up and says "something something
THE METAVERSE". And he could have a point: if you are not at least intrigued
by the idea of reading a (virtual) book while sitting (virtually) in the
Library of Babel
you need to catch up.
But until the day comes when we all wear Metaglasses (R) all the time,
we could take about their little sibling the smartphone.
Have you tried working in a library in the past months?
I have, and I tell you, it's a challenge.
This was not a problem 4 years ago, when all I needed was fast
internet and power for my notebook. But in a post-pandemic world where everyone
and their dog want to rope me into Zoom meetings this is no longer enough:
meetings require sound-proof cabins in short notice, and they are very scarce.
The Staatsbibliothek Berlins has six such cabins for all of their members
(split into 4 and 2 between its two buildings) and trust me,
they are not even close to enough.
And so, the only people who can currently accept a phone call in a library are
Olympic sprinters who can run down four flight of stairs in less time than it
takes for a call to go to voicemail (ask me how I know this!).
I imagine libraries will eventually adapt - if anything, those six cabins
in the StaaBi did come from somewhere. But again, each one of those cabins
takes away space from "regular" book readers, who may argue that libraries
are not WeWork and that I should go somewhere else.
Conclusion
I believe books will still be an integral part of our daily lives way into the
22nd century and further. Sure, eventually all new books will be digitized and
nothing will be lost ever again, but the value of holding a book in
your hands cannot be matched. And in a time when sharing is no longer caring,
I am not counting on any better replacement coming anytime soon.
I love my local library - I like the small ones, I like the big ones, and I
definitely like the VPL. And precisely because I like them I can't stop
wondering whether I'm the old guy who complains about cars while brushing his
horse. But what does the future of the library look like? Is it in the comfort
of my home? Is it in my pocket? Is it inside incredibly expensive VR glasses?
Or is the future of my library the exact same place where it was the last couple
hundred years?
Sure, sometimes one of them catches fire, but doesn't everything?
And it's not like we can't just rebuild them.
Lucky for us, manuscripts don't burn.
If you told me I was going to die in the next 24hs, asked me to guess what from,
and it was a working day of the week, "MS-Teams-induced aneurysm" would
definitely be in my top 5 guesses.
I know what you are thinking: "he's exaggerating - no software can be that bad".
This reveals one of two possible scenarios: either you don't use Teams in your
daily work, or you do use it but you only pretend to work.
Don't worry, your secret is safe with me.
But just in case, please take a seat and let me tell you all about Teams.
First and foremost, Teams is where information goes to die.
If I need a piece of information I know exists, I have to identify the Account
(I have 2), the Team (around 25 and growing), the Channel (around 5 per team
but only two in actual use) and the media type (was it in a chat? a wiki? a
file? If so, in which folder?), all of which are just slow enough to make it
frustrating but not slow enough for my office to ditch it (assuming they could
and wanted to, which then can't and don't want to).
And with a search function that works ~20 percent of the time, it's not unusual
for me to just give up.
"It's somewhere in our Teams channel" is what I tell people when I don't
actually care about whether they find what they need or not.
And if I'm looking for something said in a person-to-person Chat, this is
different from a Channel chat and I need a different window altogether.
Chat brings us to notifications.
Teams is the only tool I know that will display up to four notifications
for a single event and leave more than one on.
If someone sends a message during a meeting, Teams will display a box in the
notification area, play a sound, add an indicator to the task bar, and a
second indicator to the meeting windows.
Your window will resemble a Christmas tree until you open the chat window, even
if you already clicked on the very first notification box.
As far as Teams is concerned, a single unread chat is the most important thing
that has ever existed, and it will not rest until you've clicked on it.
The system requirements are also an issue, but all things considered they are a minor one.
Sure, I cannot calculate the number of hours that I lost waiting for things to
load, but I can at least estimate how much my employer had to pay to replace an otherwise perfectly good computer.
And yet,if I only consider them a minor issue it's because they pale in comparison to the hours I wasted doing things the Teams way, a burden no hardware upgrade can relieve.
Teams empowers you to go through the motions of work without actually getting anything done.
No project can start without yet-another useless channel, a bunch of documents you'll never find, a to-do list hidden at least four levels deep into the interface, and a collaborative editor that ruins your formatting until you open the desktop app.
But it takes a strong company leader to stand to Microsoft, and those don't come easy nor cheap.
Once your company has willingly chained itself to a Teams-based working environment, your fate is tied to that sinking ship.
And yet, the worst aspect of Teams had escaped me until today when a friend pointed it out: that we started using it because Microsoft imposed it on us right at the beginning of the pandemic.
I guess some Microsoft salesman decided that the pandemic was not hard enough on us as it was, and that's why they decided to add a buggy, resource-hungry tool as the cherry on top of the pandemic dessert.
I have not yet received my check for working as an alpha tester for a terrible tool I didn't want, and I am starting to believe that I might never get it.
Friends don't let friends implement MS Teams in their organizations.
If you are going to choose a collaboration tool that sucks, you might as well choose one that's lighter on resources and less annoying.
Even yelling at your coworkers down the hall is better, even if they are in another building.
Just say no to Teams.
