Round the block

Watching/using online properties is a fascinating experience. You’re a part of the struggle between Good and Evil on a daily basis, in so many ways. You don’t really need to pay $15 for a Star Wars franchise film (except for the Imax experience), because you get it whenever you hit a landing page.

Websites are becoming increasingly obnoxious about their ads—they literally explode in the middle of content, with (my biggest annoyance) loud videos just blazing into action and the close button nearly invisible.

Then there are the pop-up “sign up for our emails!” boxes that cover up the content about 12 seconds after you land. Very often you’re given only one option to make the obstruction disappear—enter an email address. (Although I’ve discovered that, even if they don’t provide a “Nope” choice, or a close-box button, if you just click outside the damned thing, it disappears. And if it doesn’t, I always decide that the content isn’t worth my time.)

Naturally, technologists saw the universal need in these scenarios, and thus were born any number of ad blockers, some native to the browser and some that you install as extensions. And as these products did their job, web publishers and advertisers upped their game to dodge, subvert and crush them.

Ergo the eternal war of Good and Evil.

For example, links to both Fortune and Forbes frequently are intercepted by a page that offers you a thought-for-the-day or some commercial message.

And I always wonder who it is, that one person out of their daily traffic of tens of thousands, who actually thinks, “Why, yes—I believe I’ll interrupt my quest for your pithy articles to watch some crappy commercial or ponder your faux-Zen management-lite truism.”

Recently I’ve noticed that Forbes is getting pushier about visitors to their site getting a free (at least an ad-free) ride.

I’m not the only one, as witnessed by this tweet that came across my feed:

But this is not the end of the story. Last week I was tracking down some information on events that Forbes puts on and I got into an endless loop of going-nowhere as the ad-blocker blocker refused to let me into the site, no matter how many times I clicked on the “continue to site” button. (I’d click and the page would refresh on itself.)

How did I solve the problem? I fired up Internet Explorer, used their crappy UX to get to the content page, and then closed it out again as soon as I got what I wanted.

I’m sure we’re due for more sophistication in ad blocking, to be followed by bigger hammers from the advertisers. I’m making more popcorn and settling in for the next chapter. It’ll be epic.

Gratitude Monday: I'll sleep on it

It’s a small thing today that I’m grateful for. Well, small and not-small. A bed. I’m grateful that, after nearly six months of make-do, I’ve got a real mattress and box spring to sleep on.

My previous set was way past its use-by date; I bought it around 1990, but I just never seemed to have the disposable income that would allow for replacing it. So it was always easier to not do anything about it than to go mattress shopping.

When I knew I was relocating across the country, I decided that ditching the set would be a forcing function, so that I could begin my new chapter on the East Coast with new sleeping arrangements.

(Getting it taken away turned out to be a Whole Thing, involving a company that promised way more than it delivered, causing me several new layers of stress on what’s already one of the life-shorteners. Maybe I’ll write about it at some point. Maybe not. But if you’re in the Bay Area, avoid an outfit calling itself Remoov.)

Once here, I mean, once in my new year-lease flat, it took me a while to summon up the energy and slime-repellant to go looking for mattresses. I don’t know why or how the sleep infrastructure industry turned into such a snake pit, but it rivals used cars and most medical procedures in terms of strategic avoidance of transparency and tactical bait-and-switch techniques.

So I went with Saatva, a direct-to-consumer online-only manufacturer. They weren’t nearly as transparent as they’d have you believe (they bury the fact that they charge $99 for delivery and set-up), and their response to me expressing my misgivings was to have some bolshie woman call to assure me that if I didn’t like their operating model I could take a hike. Which is certainly an interesting approach to customer satisfaction, particularly for something that costs more that five times what my first car did.

By that time, as I’d already told her, I was too tired to start the process over.

But my mattress did arrive (through some no-name delivery service) and it is such a luxury to be sleeping on a mattress, on a box spring, on a frame. I still have to deal with getting a headboard, but for the nonce, I’m just grateful to have my very own bed again. It’s a small thing, but huge for me.

Picture this

A couple of days ago someone tweeted about a new “social network” that allows you to upload old photos to their site and share with the ubiquitous family and friends. The tweet took me to the BBC Technology report; the app, Clixta (yeah, I know) was launching that day.

The idea is that by digitizing and sharing these pictures, you’re doing a lot more than getting them out of the shoebox at the back of the closet. You’re able to open up the past, getting comments and edits that flesh out what you know about those photos.

Eventually, these repositories of family and local pasts could be made available to historians and be a huge asset to our understanding of the world. Think of the alternative histories you could layer on to what the local planning council would like you to believe about a parcel of land they want to sell to developers. Or new generations of relatives that can now be visible to you, your kids and your grandkids

And, you can get help putting names, and eventually stories, to the faces. That's priceless.

Yeah, I have some concerns about privacy and uses that some entities could make of such a trove. It’s interesting that they started with the mobile app and claim to be working on a web browser interface. (Although their FAQs page promises “From Q4 2015 you’ll be able to upload directly from your Mac or PC using the new web browser based [sic] version of Clixta.” They might want to edit that.)

What I also find interesting is that in its web story, the BBC includes this photo/caption:

I got a little wound up trying to figure out what the hell, exactly, that caption means. Any thoughts?

Reality ping

Following on yesterday’s post that harks back to the world of corporate recruiting, I was interested by this story in the Wall Street Journal about the possibly parlous state of tech companies’ health.

It posits that you may be able to predict whether these enterprises are doing well by checking on the state of sales of ping pong tables. One of the examples used to illustrate the point comes from Twitter, which was apparently buying table tennis equipment like it was going out of style until a year ago. Then bupkis, followed by last quarter’s poor performance.

It’s a cliché—but a largely true one—that tech companies (especially those on the start-up side of their growth) in the Valley They Call Silicon ply their engineers with “free” food and games that they refer to as benefits. “Come work for [insert Disruptive Tech Name here] and get catered dinners, Foosball and the use of noise-cancelling headsets!”

Good health coverage and retirement plans—not so much.

(And if these kinds of enticement look good to you, just consider what they mean. The first two are indicative that they expect you to be around every night for those dinners, and that you’re supposed to unkink your computer-focused vision without actually leaving the premises. Although you will have to go outside if you want to call your gynecologist because of the open-plan office, which is why they’re giving you the headsets.)

The mindset as articulated by the CTO at Lithium Technologies is indeed there: having the ping pong table (or whatever is the game-du-jour) validates your credentials as a thought-leader ninja rockstar serial entrepreneur. Like all the other thought-leader ninja rockstar serial entrepreneurs. It’s part of the whole package that you present to VCs and technology journalists.

I question the correlation between their purchase and predictions about a company’s financial performance. I mean—at some point, don’t you hit ping pong saturation? Not only are they rather large (9’ x 5’), but you also need space around them to actually play. So after the first two or three—what are you going to do?

As for the CMO with his $100 paddle in its special bag—well, that’s more an indicator of individual arrogance and excess than of corporate success.

But that’s the Valley for you.

Thanking you, Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

This came into my queue last month:

I find it interesting for several reasons.

The only time in the past years I applied to Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, was last October. So—six months for a response; not the worst ever from any modern business.

However, it looks like they’ve outsourced their recruiting, their communications, or both. Or perhaps they’re simply saving money by hiring gerbils to write these things.

I refer you first to the subject line, where “And” has been substituted for “An”. And paragraph three, where “show” is used instead of “shown”. Another possible money-saver is not using appropriate punctuation. Perhaps they’re saving up all those commas like air miles for a trip to Vegas.

It’s indicative that they talk about “find[ing] jobs that match the content of your resume.” Everything in the corporate recruiting business hinges on the data-mining algorithm of the Applicant Tracking System (ATS); you’ll never speak with a humanoid unless the ATS finds sufficient mention of keywords in your résumé.

(True suggestion given by a savvy recruiter: you can splatter keywords like “Javascript” or “data science” all over your résumé by entering them in tiny type that you then color white. Human eyes won’t see them, but the algorithm will, and it will move you to the top of the list because it’s programmed to give preference to the number of times the keywords appear.)

But the telling touch is that closing. “Thanking you” is just so South Asia. The email doesn’t start out with “Hope you are doing great!”, but I’m still thinking it originated somewhere in the vicinity of Bengaluru.

If the ATS was done by the same crowd of gerbils, then I’m truly sorry for anyone who has to navigate it in hopes of finding a job with Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company.

Painted green and pagan

Here’s another indicator that civilization is headed straight to hell in a handbasket: The Guardian’s page of photos of the Beltane festivities held Sunday at Glastonbury.

It’s not just that the photos look like they might have been submitted by what the Brits refer to as Members of the Public. (They’re colorful, but not especially well composed.) It’s that the captions are mindless. “A woman holds up a bunch of flowers”; “A dance is performed”; and (my favorite) “A man painted green and dressed in green”.

It’s like The Guardian has turned over the amateur photos to a caption-bot. Or possibly outsourced the work to Minsk.

Just for ducks, I checked out the Telegraph, The Guardian’s polar political opposite. Their picture page is not materially better. My only take-away from them is that Beltane is a pagan festival. Because they say so in eight of the 14 captions.

Gratitude Monday: Beauty growing on trees

At some point during the development of the various communities in the Valley They Call Silicon, someone must have got a terrific deal on magnolias, because they’ve been planted all over the South Bay and the Peninsula, in residential yards and along municipal parking strips.

I used to love encountering them on my walks; they never failed to lift my spirits, whatever their stage of blooming. If you caught them at just the right time, you could even step into their scent.

But let me say that, on a walk around my neighborhood last week, I was struck as of old by the power of dogwood, which I prefer to the vaunted cherry trees. When dogwood are in full bloom, they are just clouds of beauty, white or pink.

And today I’m grateful that I am back amongst them.

Proud-pied April: Stars at elbow and foot

Our final poem for National Poetry Month is from Dylan Thomas. We last heard from him three years ago, so we're due.

We should also visit this particular piece because I’ve dragged you through a lot of death this month, for some reason. Between Irish history, World War I and various terror activities, we’ve waded through a lot of blood. So let’s allow Thomas to take us beyond that mortal threshold, when the clean bones are gone. It’s a good way to see us out of this April.

“And Death Shall Have No Dominion”

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead man naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

Proud-pied April: What LIFE is really all about

Alright, we’ve had some pretty grim poems throughout this month, so time to change it up. How about something from Roald Dahl? That’s got to be a bit of a laugh.

Well, now that I consider it—I suppose the laugh factor involved here rather depends on whether you’re the farmer or the pig.

Whatever.

“The Pig”

In England once there lived a big

And wonderfully clever pig.

To everybody it was plain

That Piggy had a massive brain.

He worked out sums inside his head,

There was no book he hadn't read.

He knew what made an airplane fly,

He knew how engines worked and why.

He knew all this, but in the end

One question drove him round the bend:

He simply couldn't puzzle out

What LIFE was really all about.

What was the reason for his birth?

Why was he placed upon this earth?

His giant brain went round and round.

Alas, no answer could be found.

Till suddenly one wondrous night.

All in a flash he saw the light.

He jumped up like a ballet dancer

And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"

"They want my bacon slice by slice

"To sell at a tremendous price!

"They want my tender juicy chops

"To put in all the butcher's shops!

"They want my pork to make a roast

"And that's the part'll cost the most!

"They want my sausages in strings!

"They even want my chitterlings!

"The butcher's shop! The carving knife!

"That is the reason for my life!"

Such thoughts as these are not designed

To give a pig great piece of mind.

Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,

A pail of pigswill in his hand,

And piggy with a mighty roar,

Bashes the farmer to the floor…

Now comes the rather grizzly bit

So let's not make too much of it,

Except that you must understand

That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,

He ate him up from head to toe,

Chewing the pieces nice and slow.

It took an hour to reach the feet,

Because there was so much to eat,

And when he finished, Pig, of course,

Felt absolutely no remorse.

Slowly he scratched his brainy head

And with a little smile he said,

"I had a fairly powerful hunch

"That he might have me for his lunch.

"And so, because I feared the worst,

"I thought I'd better eat him first.

And here is a delightful rendition, courtesy of Pam Ferris:

Proud-pied April: I am a pause

Let’s return to Latin America for today’s addition to National Poetry Month. Like the Chilean Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz was both a poet and a diplomat, in this case in the service of Mexico. He also was a Nobelist, winning for literature in 1990.

I love the moment captured in “Between Going and Staying”. It strikes me as something you’d read in a quantum physics paper: that frozen moment of light, matter and motion that the poet wraps in words. But not one extraneous word. See for yourself:

“Between Going and Staying”

Between going and staying the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters.

 Motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause.

In the original:

“Entre irse y quedarse”

Entre irse y quedarse dude el día,
enamorado de su transparencia.

La tarde circular es ya bahía:
en su quieto vaivén se mece el munco.

Todo es visible y todo es elusivo,
todo está cerca y todo es intocable.

Los papeles, el libro, el vaso, el lápiz
reposan a la sombra de sus nombres

Latir del tiempo que en mi sien repite
la misma terca sílaba de sangre.

La luz hace del muro indiferente
un espectral teatro de reflejos.

En el centro de un ojo me descubro;
no me mira, me miro en su mirada.

Se disipa el instante.  Sin moverme,
yo me quedo y me voy: soy una pausa.