Posts on Canal Swans

Solidarity Infrastructures, AltTextGpt

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 23:19:51 +0000

While collaborating on finishing the website for Solidarity Infrastructures, one of the last things I did was create a ProcessWire module to automate adding alt text to all the images in a website using the Open AI API, called AltTextGpt.

Many, or even most, uses of LMs may end up being against the ends of Solidarity Infrastructures, but I generally follow the first principle of Disability Driven Development:

There is no “right answer”, DDD takes a situated approach to development, with care for specific needs and wishes in specific contexts.

Static Site Generators, Permacomputing, Software Decay & 87 Lines Of Plain Javascript

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 23:19:51 +0000

This is a story of static site generators, software decay, and an attempt at a solution using 87 lines of plain javascript called thimble-switcher, largely related to this post by @tty@sunbeam.city:

My code from 5 years ago: “security vulnerabilities”, “this project is dead”. Super Mario Bros. 3 NES ROM: continues to work flawlessly 36 years later. I can kiiind of understand why these are different, but not entirely. Is it the Internet connectivity that makes the difference? Or are there effects at play? It feels like there are more factors, but I can’t pin anything down. I just want to write software that can be done and stay useful. Thoughts welcome, as I continue to grapple with this.

PeachCloud & Bioregional Computing

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 23:19:51 +0000

an image of peachcloud next to lavender flowers

A bioregion is an “ecologically and geographically defined area”, contrasted with ways of dividing land such as states and legal jurisdictions, which are human-created, and not necessarily in connection with living ecosystems.

The trend of globalized computing seems to go further in this direction of disconnection from nature and context — the status-quo internet, often symbolized by “the cloud”, is imagined to be both everywhere and nowhere, and sometimes seems like it does not exist in a place, even though in the end every computer exists in the material realm somewhere.