…was the title of a surrealist cartoon book by B.Kliban (more famous for amusing drawings of cats). We frequently admonished each other to pick our food carefully back then in the 70s.
Despite this shared experience, MyGuy picked up this huge bell pepper at the grocery.
I'm here to kvell about a nifty browser extension, StopTheMadness
(Everything except the name, which I could do without. More accurately, it's GiveMeBackControl).
StopTheMadness wrests control back from websites, so I can always right-click, copy text/images, prevent opening in new pages, prevent media autoplay, and much more. Visit site for full marketing info:
https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness/
It's currently available for Chrome (and Chromium browsers) on Windows, Mac, Linux.
For Mac/Safari it's a full-fledged app (as now is required for Safari extensions) with even more benefits.
I can assign browsers to domains and apps to URL schemes.
The social media giants seem to optimize function for Chromium-based browsers. So in my case, I always use Brave (with its robust privacy features) for FB, IG, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Gmail and YouTube. Any cookies left by those sites are isolated to those sites, with my principal work remaining in Safari.
URL schemes means I control which apps open feed://, mailto: etc.
It also offers domain-specific implementation of styles if I use the Safari style sheet option -- it's not a full replacement for Tampermonkey yet, but who knows? The dev, Jeff Johnson, has been steadily adding features.
Sadly, it's not available for iOS (yet?)
When I began computing, everything was dark mode: green pixels on a gray-green screen. ( (just like this one, resting on two mighty 158k floppy disk drives on an Apple IIe) )
I was thrilled when the Mac showed up with black on white! So much easier on the eyes! I was mystified and repelled when Adobe products began showing a dark UI. Now it’s the hot new thing--the next version of iOS will offer it.
I learned a lot from TidBITS’s deep dive into why dark mode isn’t actually that much easier on the eyes.
https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/
The full article discusses the science of visual perception, and acknowledges its conclusions are relevant to typical eyesight. Some people’s vision requirements are different, and I’m very glad that modern computer systems let us change displays to optimize for what we can see.
Last week when I was kvelling about my new glasses, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
killing_rose explained how rose-colored glasses minimized migraine
( My Apple devices let me create helpful tints with software )
ETA Feb 2021:
I've been reading fanfic for twenty years! I started reading on desktop computers with CRT screens. Upgraded to a Palm OS device with the lovely iSilo reader. This showed me the magic of offline fanfic: I could read while reclining. When I finally got a laptop, I backslid a bit. I would download web pages and read them offline in my browser, but I was still tied to the upright posture a laptop requires.
I had a brief flirtation with a Kobo e-ink reader, but it wasn't bright enough for me. That did teach me to appreciate ereader software—I got an iPod Touch basically just to read fanfic on the bus. I stepped up to an iPad for the larger print--things got really swell when I got a LEVO iPad Stand*
I've tried every reader program there is, and mostly I use Instapaper on my iPad/iPhone.
Instapaper is available for iOS, Android, and Kindle as well as the web
https://www.instapaper.com/apps
and the basic service is free!
* I got the older one with bungee cords which is not very 21st century but it works.
I used to keep all my fanfic on Dropbox: all my PDFs, docs, epubs, audio files and plain text notes there to access from my iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro.
(I'm just one person, so I don't have to worry about managing versions.)
I can't seem to do this with iCloud Drive. When I create a Project folder at iCloud Drive's root level, my iOS apps can't see the data there. The iOS apps all want their files to be inside their own app-specific folders.
Is there a way around this?
I’ve been data & stuff gardening which is very soothing
( five things )
I’m here to share the good word about “quiet web reading.” ( Four approaches with step-by-step detail )
I didn't find this answer on a quick search of Mobilereads.com forum, so I thought I'd share. I read on my iPad in the Kobo app. I buy my ebooks from Kobo because they have a deal with the American Booksellers Association; when I buy a book there Room of One's Own gets a 15% cut. ( why & how step by step )
branchandroot