Sven Dahlstrand

I had a bunch of links sitting around that I meant to share last year, but never got to. I’m just dumping them here now because I wish to kick off 2024 with a clean slate and no link debt. 😊 Let’s go!

First, here’s two hundred and six things a punkist should know (via Veronique) and a synth with a ferrofluid visualizer called Symbiote X. Okay, then there’s (we)bsite – a living collection of internet dreams from people like you and me.

Tom made me aware of this passage from Zadie Smith’s Feel Free that more or less describes me and my brain:

I have the kind of brain that erases everything that passes, almost immediately, like that dustpan-and-brush dog in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland sweeping up the path as he progresses along it. I never know what I was doing on what date, or how old I was when this or that happened–and I like it that way. I feel when I am very old and my brain “goes” it won’t feel so very different from the life I live now, in this miasma of non-memory, which, though it infuriates my nearest and earest, must suit me somehow, as I can’t seem, even by acts of will, to change it.

About getting old and eventually leaving this world… Derek is thinking about our personal websites and how to preserve them after our deaths. Rebecca and I are the same age, so I guess I also have around 16,000 days or so left on earth. On a more cheery subject, I absolutely love Katherine’s site! The typography, the index, and the i carry your website with me (i carry it in my website) section. Jake does a similar thing with JAKE.MUSEUM where he chronicles his journey through the world of web design and development. There are cute details like frames for the frames and the fact that some websites are “on loan”.

Hey, by the way, you should listen to the 6502 song 🎵 and look at some very lickable fungi and slime molds. 🍄

And if you’re a DMG fan, check out Gijs’ modified Game Boy projects, like Reboot. Actually, you should take your time and explore more of gieskes.nl and all of his projects. If you hate the Game Boy but love PC-98, you should check out the anime 16bit Sensation: Another Layer. I’m a couple of episodes in and enjoying it so far. It’s about a 19-year-old illustrator going back in time to make bishōjo games. Fittingly, the series has a very 90s looking website.

Back in August, Zach started this thread that later became an educational, sensational, inspirational, foundational web development reading list mini site.

Dan reminded us that we should use RSS for joy, Rachel answered the question “Why have a personal website?” with “Because it’s fun!” and I couldn’t agree more. Emma shared 50 of the weirdest, most wonderful corners of the web, and speaking about the weird wide web, here’s some URL poetry for you.

Also, you should blog, and your website can be like your home.

That’s it. That was all the tabs I had open in my “to blog” tab group. Clean slate. 2024, I welcome you. Happy new year! 🎆

P.S. I haven’t really told anyone yet, but there’s a page I’m calling Hyperlink Hodgepodge where URLs I stumble upon end up. There’s no context other than the URL and its title – no commentary or quotes. They are there because I loved them or hated them or found them interesting enough to hit the little star button in my feed reader. Check it out for even more links.

This September, Micro.blog ran a photoblogging challenge: snap a photo every day based on a prompt. I participated for the first 14 days before… life happened. 🤷‍♂️ But I had a lot of fun with the challenge for those two weeks. And really enjoyed seeing what everyone else was coming up with throughout the month.

Congratulations and well done to everyone who participated!

I promised to reveal all the machine-generated images after the challenge. Yes, some of my entries were not snapped by me, but instead dreamed up by a text-to-image model. First, here’s a complete list of my 14 entries:

• Day 1: abstract
• Day 2: buildup
• Day 3: precious
• Day 4: orange
• Day 5: forest
• Day 6: well
• Day 7: panorama
• Day 8: yonder
• Day 9: language
• Day 10: cycle
• Day 11: retrospect
• Day 12: panic
• Day 13: glowing
• Day 14: statue

Five of these were generated by software: buildup, orange, well, retrospect, and panic. I also broke the cycle for day 10 and published a photo taken by my dad. The rest of the entries were snapped by yours truly.

Going into the challenge, I was prepared to lie, not only with the generated images but also with my writing. To trick and deceive you all. 😇 But it never came to that. So, the stroll I took and the beer I drank… all of that actually happened.

Phew. It feels good getting that out there; no more lying on my blog. For now.

Thanks to everyone who followed along and guessed how the images were made. I fooled you a few times, but over all, I’m very impressed with your ability to identify synthographs.

I’ll post a picture every day for the September 2023 Photoblogging Challenge. To keep it interesting, I will sometimes use my computer to manifest a “photo.”

And you – yes, you – are welcome to guess whether it’s snapped by me 🧔‍♀️ or dreamed up by a text-to-image model 🤖.

It might be fun! I, for sure, will learn a lot, and maybe we will all be better at spotting fakes at the end of the challenge.

Here are some constraints I’ve set up for myself, besides the rules stipulated by Micro.blog.

• Real photos must be snapped by me.
• It’s okay to use photos from my archive.
• I will write the prompts when generating images.
• Text-to-image models must have a permissive license and run on my machine. No cloud allowed.
• Cropping, color adjustments, and light retouching are fair game for all pics – real or fake.
• I’m allowed to lie and deceive on the blog for the duration of the challenge.
• But I will reveal all the lies and generated images when the challenge is over. Full transparency.

So, for the rest of September, don’t believe everything I share here. And start guessing! Here’s the pic for day one.

The other day, after running my blog on Jekyll for 13 years, I switched to Hugo. Moving from one static site generator to another involves a lot of things to take care of. Among them was this directory with hundreds of microblog posts written in Markdown. The posts published dates encoded as Unix timestamps in the filenames: 1665322487.md etc.

Micro.blog hosts my new Hugo blog, and their import tools do not support Unix timestamps in file names. Instead, publish dates should be put in the YAML front matter, as follows:

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---
date: 2022-10-09 13:34
---
Had a great day in the forest with friends. Grilling sausages, roasting marshmallows, and taking a short hike. Hair smells like a campfire now. 🥰

So, I basically had two options. I could manually fix this by snatching the timestamp from the filename, converting it to the right date-time format, and pasting that into the file’s YAML front matter. Rinse and repeat. Hundreds of times.

Or I could just write a script that automated the process for me. As a programmer, this is what I usually do. Even when it won’t actually save me any time in the end. 😅

But, instead, I tried a third option and asked ChatGPT to do it for me. I’ve played a lot with the chatbot and had it generate code for me in the past. But just toy examples, not, you know, anything useful in the real world. This task, though, seemed like a perfect fit. Easy to define and limited in scope. So, without further ado, here’s me and ChatGPT programming away. Complete with lazy typing and spelling mistakes (mostly mine).

My pair programming session with ChatGPT (GPT-4)

Sven: Write a Ruby script that loops thorough all files in the directory provided and adds the filename to yaml frontmatter without extension.

For example the file named 1676537577.md should end up like this in the frontmatter:

-–
date: 1676537577
-–

ChatGPT: Here is a Ruby script that loops through all files in a specified directory and adds the filename without the extension as the date field in the YAML frontmatter.

ruby

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require 'yaml'
require 'fileutils'

def process_file(file)
  frontmatter = { 'date' => File.basename(file, '.*') }
  content = File.read(file)
  content.sub!(/---\s*\n.*?---\s*\n/m, '') # Remove existing frontmatter if present
  File.open(file, 'w') do |f|
    f.write(YAML.dump(frontmatter) + "---\n" + content)
  end
end

dir = ARGV[0] || '.'

raise "Directory #{dir} not found" unless Dir.exist?(dir)

Dir.glob(File.join(dir, '*.md')) do |file|
  process_file(file)
  puts "Processed: #{file}"
end

puts 'All files have been processed.'

Save this script as add_date_to_frontmatter.rb and run it with the desired directory path as an argument:

bash

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ruby add_date_to_frontmatter.rb /path/to/directory

If no argument is provided, the script will default to the current working directory. This script assumes that your files have the .md extension.

Sven: Great! Now make is so that the file name (without extension) is processed as a unix timestamp and converted to a iso-8601 formatted date and time instead.

ChatGPT: To modify the script to process the filename as a UNIX timestamp and convert it to an ISO-8601 formatted date and time, you can use Ruby’s built-in Time class.

Here’s the updated script:

ruby

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require 'yaml'
require 'fileutils'

def process_file(file)
  filename_without_ext = File.basename(file, '.*')
  timestamp = filename_without_ext.to_i
  iso_date = Time.at(timestamp).utc.iso8601

  frontmatter = { 'date' => iso_date }
  content = File.read(file)
  content.sub!(/---\s*\n.*?---\s*\n/m, '') # Remove existing frontmatter if present
  File.open(file, 'w') do |f|
    f.write(YAML.dump(frontmatter) + "---\n" + content)
  end
end

dir = ARGV[0] || '.'

raise "Directory #{dir} not found" unless Dir.exist?(dir)

Dir.glob(File.join(dir, '*.md')) do |file|
  process_file(file)
  puts "Processed: #{file}"
end

puts 'All files have been processed.'

Save this script as add_iso_date_to_frontmatter.rb and run it with the desired directory path as an argument:

bash

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ruby add_iso_date_to_frontmatter.rb /path/to/directory

If no argument is provided, the script will default to the current working directory. This script assumes that your files have the .md extension.

Sven: Okay, I changed my mind, instead of ISO-8601 make it on the format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm. For example 2020-03-28 22:10.

ChatGPT: Sure, you can modify the script to format the date and time as “yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm” by using Ruby’s strftime method. Here’s the updated script:

ruby

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require 'yaml'
require 'fileutils'

def process_file(file)
  filename_without_ext = File.basename(file, '.*')
  timestamp = filename_without_ext.to_i
  formatted_date = Time.at(timestamp).utc.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')

  frontmatter = { 'date' => formatted_date }
  content = File.read(file)
  content.sub!(/---\s*\n.*?---\s*\n/m, '') # Remove existing frontmatter if present
  File.open(file, 'w') do |f|
    f.write(YAML.dump(frontmatter) + "---\n" + content)
  end
end

dir = ARGV[0] || '.'

raise "Directory #{dir} not found" unless Dir.exist?(dir)

Dir.glob(File.join(dir, '*.md')) do |file|
  process_file(file)
  puts "Processed: #{file}"
end

puts 'All files have been processed.'

Save this script as add_formatted_date_to_frontmatter.rb and run it with the desired directory path as an argument:

bash

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ruby add_formatted_date_to_frontmatter.rb /path/to/directory

If no argument is provided, the script will default to the current working directory. This scrit assumes that your files have the .md extension.

Closing thoughts

The final output from ChatGPT just worked and successfully completed the task at hand. That’s pretty cool! Is the implementation perfect? No, but it gets the job done. For a one-off script, I can’t complain.

The resulting program is short, and I could’ve come up with a solution and typed it out myself. But it’s fascinating to program in plain English. And I doubt I would have come up with the solution as fast as ChatGPT. I didn’t time our session, but estimate it took ChatGPT about a minute to generate each answer. So, from my first prompt to a job well done, it took no more than five minutes.

By the way, the first draft of the program ran fine as well. In the second draft, ChatGPT didn’t require 'time' at the top, but after human intervention, that version also ran correctly.

So, March 22, 2023 was the first time I paired programmed with a large language model to successfully solve a real world problem. And I’m certain we’ll team up again in the future to solve even bigger and more complicated problems.

Please, buy my stuff. 😅 Currently, I have 12 things to be listed on eBay (or Tradera). But if you’re quick, you can grab them before they are listed. I will give you a good deal.

Everything currently resides with me here in Sweden 🇸🇪, but I ship worldwide.

Soon to be listed, be quick! 🚀

I haven’t come around to photographing these yet. Reach out if you’re interested, and I will snap some pictures for you.

Most of these are complete and in the original box. I take great care of my gadgets, so they are all in good shape.

Price? Give me an offer once you’ve seen the item’s condition.

💌 Contact me

Last updated: January 21, 2024

• Meta Quest 2
• reMarkable Type Folio (keyboard)
• Another reMarkable Type Folio (keyboard)
• Vive Focus (VR headset, development edition)
• Longines watch
• Arduboy (handheld, open source, Arduino, game console)
• Line-us (Internet Connected Drawing Robot)
• Estimote proximity beacons (dev-kit, Bluetooth LE beacons)
• Game Boy Pocket Printer
• Canon Super 8 Camera
• Pair of red chairs
• Earpods

Currently Listed Elsewhere 🏷️

• Kindle Paperwhite
• Kindle Voyage

Already sold 🙌

• PlayStation 4 Pro
• Bang & Olufsen’s Beoplay H6
• Nintendo Classic Mini: NES
• PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller
• iPod Shuffle fourth generation and EarPods
• Kindle Oasis third generation and leather cover
• Apple Magic Keyboard (first generation, Swedish layout)
• PocketBook Color (e-reader with E Ink color screen)
• AirPods first generation
• AirPods second generation
• iPad 3 Wi-Fi + Cellular (no box)
• Nokia 2.2 (Android smartphone)
• Logitech Harmony Touch (universal remote)
• ONYX BOOX MAX 2 (e-reader and E Ink monitor)
• Philips Hue Bridge and Four Lights
• Philips Hue Bridge and Three Lights
• Philips Hue Dimmer Switch
• 3 x Studio Ghibli Blu-ray movies
• Serial Experiments Lain Bly-ray movie
• Commodore 64 (retro computer)
• MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018, Swedish keyboard layout)
• Apple Watch Series 5, 44 mm, GPS + Cellular
• Zoom H1 Handy Recorder
• RØDE Podcaster
• iPad mini 2
• AirPods (2nd generation)
• Kindle Paperwhite (10th generation, 8 GB)
• DÖRR CRK-32 (foldable Reflector Kit 7-in-1)
• Mic stand König & Meyer (1 of 2)
• Mic stand König & Meyer (2 of 2)
• RØDE PSM1 Shock Mount
• Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H7
• TwelveSouth BookArc (laptop stand)
• Foot rest
• Oculus Go 32 GB VR Headset
• Analogue Super Nt
• Super Game Boy 2
• Super Nintendo controller
• Fjällräven Kånken backpack
• 2 × RØDE Lavalier GO
• Thunderbolt to USB-C cable
• Nintendo Switch
• Mgaxyff NFC RFID Reader / Writer
• Apple TV
• Dock for Nintendo Switch

I’m stoked to be presenting at Micro Camp tomorrow, March 12. On a topic near and dear to my heart: web accessibility. This space will be updated in the future with:

• The video-on-demand version of my talk Accessible Microblogging: A Crash Course.
• A transcript of the same talk.
• Links to relevant resources. Update: you’ll find the links below.

See you here in a couple of days! 👋

Explore Web Accessibility

My presentation is about alternative texts for, or descriptions of, images. The New York Times recently ran an article well worth reading if you want to go deeper down that specific rabbit hole. The Hidden Image Descriptions Making the Internet Accessible.

And if you want something more hands-on, I recommend Alt-texts: The Ultimate Guide.

I also mention screen readers: software that reads the content on a screen aloud. Used mainly by people with low or no vision, but, of course, these tools can be utilized by everyone. For example, I use a screen reader to read long articles and blog posts when my eyes are tired. They are also decent as proofreaders.

If you own a smartphone, you probably have a screen reader. On Android, it’s called Talkback, and iOS has VoiceOver. I encourage you to play around with the feature. It may become your new favorite tool!

Finally, if you want to learn more about web accessibility beyond alternative text, Writing for Web Accessibility is a good start.

A humanly curated list of websites. Often homemade, quirky, and personal. Always made with 100 % love towards the free and open web.

🚧 Under Construction

Blogrolls, Directories & Webrings

• blogroll.org
• href.cool
• gossipsweb.net
• webring.xxiivv.com

Smol Web Search Engines

• search.marginalia.nu
• wiby.me
• millionshort.com
• feedle.world/top-stori…
• kagi.com/smallweb
• exa.ai
• perplexity.ai

Budroll

“Kind of like a blogroll but with a higher barrier to entry.” Websites by humans I hang out with afk.

• sannalund.se
• hampus.io
• www.filippilthammar.se
• www.webbfroken.se
• smalandbrewing.co

Me, Elsewhere in Cyberspace

• www.svendahlstrand.com
• www.svendahlstrand.se
• www.kodkosmos.com
• hejinter.net
• www.lasloss.se
• spelkosmos.se
• enklaretillvaro.se
• bikku.se
• dahlstrand.tk
• callisto.tk
• zomes.cjb.net
• https://come.to/svempas_home
• user.tninet.se/~zyl334e/
• home.swipnet.se/~w-31311/

Thursday, we packed our bags and hit the road down south. We steered towards Brösarp and Talldungen. When summer comes to an end, we go there for a night or two. It has stuck as a tradition. We went for a swim in the Baltic Sea, talked a lot, ate, and drank well.

We also played around with our cameras, snapping pictures of old fishing sheds, and tried catching waves on video. I’m pretty sure we’ll be back again next year.

Sanna ran a book circle on Discord, and I joined to discuss the short story Everything’s Fine by Matthew Pridham. It’s interesting to learn about fellow readers’ thoughts and opinions. This time around, everyone had interpreted the story roughly the same way. And most of us enjoyed it.

On the subject of being on the same page: I nodded along while reading Documents ≠ Programs.

I’ve gravitated towards the Micro.blog community for years now. A welcoming bunch of people, just blogging away and having a good time. Somewhat like Twitter, but nice! Actually, it’s not at all like Twitter. There’s no follower count, no likes, and the public timeline is curated by actual human beings. 😲 Can you believe that? It’s super cozy!

Anyway, this week I decided to go from lurker to participant and started micro posting there under the moniker @sod. Wanna hear how that clock up there sounds? Well, you have to visit my post about grandpa’s clock to find out.

Sanna and I had a date Thursday night, entirely dedicated to work on Läslöss, our blog about books and how much we adore them. We had a good time, and I ended up writing a short post about the Incredible Doom comic. So if Swedish makes any sense to you, you should follow that link.

It feels good being fully vaccinated (for now), and we’re slowly getting used to hanging out with friends and family and going on social events again. I visited an ex-colleague and friend in her house, shared a great lunch with dad, and the week ended on a high note, as we went to a concert for the first time since… I don’t know; forever?

It was nice! It was a little chilly outside, but that was outweighed by the pure joy of experiencing live music again. Thanks, Nina (The Cardigans) and Martin (The Soundtrack of Our Lives), for a great evening at Huskvarna Folkets Park.

Also, I’m probably a cyber-realist. Good to know. 😅

Let’s see if I can get back into writing by posting on a regular schedule. Once a week. Cherry-picked tidbits from my life the last seven days. I’ve been alive for 1,849 weeks already, so, without further ado, here’s what happened in the thirty-third week of 2021.

I got my second jab! 💉 It went smooth, 5 minutes of waiting for my turn and 30 minutes of relaxing after. The arm felt a bit sore for a couple of days, but no other side effects.

For some reason, The Green Knight didn’t go up here in Jönköping. So, we went out of town to catch it. Totally worth it; the movie was phenomenal! Now, I look forward to Robin’s live reading of the book in January.

Sanna and I decided to spend our extended weekend at Sommarbo. And what a great decision that was. The water remained warm-ish, the sun shined, and we had a great time. We both agreed the air felt a bit different, though. Autumn is coming! 🍂

We also sent the second issue of our cozy newsletter about reading. If you cherish books and can decipher Swedish, you should subscribe.

Sometimes it’s troublesome not to own a car. Like when we buy something enormous and heavy and need to bring it home. Or when Sanna and I want to take a trip to the summer house. Wouldn’t it be easier just to get a car?

But a car:

• costs money (purchase, fuel, insurance, tax, maintenance, depreciation)
• needs to be parked somewhere (parking fee)
• needs love and care (maintenance, washing, car inspection, switch to and from snow tires)

When I think about all this and the investment in time and money, I feel we are just fine without a car.

Most of the times there’s no trouble taking a walk, the bike or public transport. But in some situations, you’ll need a car. We rent a car for a few weeks during summer and a bunch of weekends throughout a year. That’s something we can afford to do quite a few times a year before it even comes close to the cost of owning a car.

So far we live a car-free life and enjoy moving around by foot, having one less thing to think about and spend money and time on.

Illustration by: Sanna Lund

This is Lars. He loves letters. He likes to open them, read them and send them.

Lars has an inbox where all the letters end up. Every five minutes or so, he takes a look in the inbox. Maybe there’s something new?

There’s a lot of spam and subscriptions, but once in a while, there’s something of importance.

When Lars have finished reading all the letter, he puts them back in the inbox again. Lars’s inbox is filled to the brim and about to explode.

Are you like Lars?

Somedays, I am, and that’s no good. Checking your email inbox again and again, just in case, is stressful and takes time. It’s also hard to know what’s of real importance and not.

The worst is when I read all the mail in the inbox and then leave it there. I never shove letters back into my letterbox once I’ve read them in the real world.

I’ve put up some simple rules for myself to handle my electronic inbox:

• Disable notifications (sound and vibration).
• Try to open the inbox no more than three times a day.
• Unsubscribe from newsletters.
• Throw unwanted mail in the trash.
• Do you need to act on the email? Do it right away, answer, and archive if it takes less than five minutes.
• Will it take you longer than five minutes? Add the task to your to-do list and then archive the mail.
• Is no action needed? Then just archive.
• Strive for inbox zero.

Following these rules helps me be less like Lars. I get more time to do fun stuff when I’m the boss over my inbox. How do you handle your email?