DEV Community: Travis Southard

Instead of AI Site

Travis Southard — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 03:16:41 +0000

Over the weekend I published a very basic website with alternatives to using generative AI. It is certainly still a work in progress and there's a few things I missed that some community members suggested that I will continue to add. Yes, there are some good uses for machine learning. No those uses are not creative work, searching, or surveillance.

insteadofai.site

Building the web I want to see

Travis Southard — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

I have made a webring! This feels important to me as I try (along with many others) to build a better web. This was a project I have been meaning to take on for some time. I did start with a basic set of links to friends in the footer of my website, but I wanted to use it more to show the web I usually interact with.

I would still like to add a little flair and some organization to the webring page, but I am trying to build this website without delivering any JavaScript, if possible. I do think the current iteration could go into a noscript block and then go and implement the immediate method I am thinking of. I did spend quite some time trying to use a force-directed graph to help me layout the Venn-diagram-like design I was originally imagining. In this case, a "Done is better than perfect" approach had to be taken.

The web has become less magical. There is a lot of evidence pointing to search engines largely getting worse and nigh unusable and the state of the web (as most people use it) has become "five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four."

I remember the web feeling very magical and largely found the best websites from word of mouth from people I knew. The exception to this largely was finding webcomics from the footers of webcomics I was already reading. Many of the comics I was reading would have a "My friends" section with links to their comics. Even then that felt very powerful and community-oriented, but as discovery and recommendation algorithms have dominated those five website we go to, that kind of list feels almost transgressive.

Facebook and Twitter both punish users for linking to anything that's outside their walled gardens. Instagram only allows for one external link per account (the famous "link in bio"), which has led to services like Linktree because of course we all have more than one link to share. But these are all platforms where, if you were to be banned, you would lose access to everything if it was the only place you kept your photos, videos, jokes, etc. Or the site may have a catastrophic data failure and lose everything.

The method I have appreciated for avoiding getting shut out by some billionaire has been POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site; Syndicate Elsewhere). I post blogs, art, and projects on my own site first, then share them to social media I use. Having your own website is a way to have aesthetic control over your own space as well! Almost none of the large platforms allow you to customize your page with more than a profile picture, banner, and MAYBE a highlight color. But those aeshetics matter. They help set us apart, express ourselves, and signal to others that we may be aligned just on sight.

Making a website can certainly seem daunting. You don't have to handcraft code for a website (though it is fun, and I like it myself). There are many WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get (pronounced wizzy wig)) options out there from the big corporate spaces or more indie spaces like NoBlogs or NeoCities. In an increasingly online space, having your own little place to call your own feels more and more necessary. And if you want to jump into the deep end, you could learn to code and also how to self-host a website in your own home.

We all have cool businesses, practices, hobbies, and more that we would like to share with others, so we should have control over how we present that, and how we connect to each other. So please, build your own sites. Make them how you want them (which may include making something crazily maximalist, go for it), and link to your friends and the people whose work you like most. The Indie Web is already a growing movement and there's some great things being built. The future of the web is many more small connected sites each with cool, niche, resource-rich pages.

Your project is worth it

Travis Southard — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 04:00:00 +0000

After reading a blog post from Andrew Dana Hudson about thermochauvinism, I have begun referring to July as "Hot Winter," a time of year when I spend most of my time indoors because it is uncomfortable and even dangerous to be outside. I tend to spend my free time similarly to actual winter: video games, home DIY, reading, taking care of house plants, and wishing I could ride my bike or work in my garden.

As soon as the heat broke last week I went out and went on a longer mountain bike ride than usual. It felt wonderful to be out on the trails, using my body, and just gazing at water, birds, and plants. Riding a bike is almost always just a shortcut to feeling better for me. Physical exertion and fresh air do wonderful for my dopamine producers.

In the first week of June, I rode with a friend on Grinduro PA, a 70(-ish) mile gravel and single-track ride in and out of Loyalsock State Forest. It was a challenge but I was pretty in shape for it, though I could certainly have used more training on climbing specifically. It was a great time and worth doing if for nothing else than reminding me I am capable and enjoy days where "all you have to do is ride you bike" as one of my Bike & Build teammates puts it.

Having done that ride towards the start of the summer has been good for me in riding casually afterward and having a recent difficult accomplishment to comapre against when a ride or section of a ride starts feeling like a slog. I have also been feeling this in my day job lately. Getting stuck on a particular issue and strugglig to find a solution, but pushing through with memories of solving past tough problems or errors and remembering the satisfaction of having beat those.

That is such a hard thing to overcome when working on any project: A problem without an obvious solution and little findable community support. These are awful and can end a project without enough skill, motivation, or some combination of the two. I have always struggled with asking for help and been too stubborn with myself that I can definitely find the answer on this next search around. Luckily I have great colleagues and peers who are happy to work through a problem with me.

For other developers (or anyone working on any shape of project): Please ask your peers, community, and colleagues for help. Your project is worth completing or at least worth getting to a proof-of-concept well enough to know it's worth abandoning.

We cannot afford to skip repairs

Travis Southard — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Maintenance and repair are essential to a more sustainable, and frankly pleasant world. Well-maintained bikes feel, sound, and ride better. Well-maintained roads are easier and safer for everyone to navigate. Well-maintained gardens look and smell better and are more productive. Maintenance is boring and tedious though compared to starting fresh. Repairing a broken thing is harder than repairing something regularly maintained.

What I particularly find difficult is perceiving that something that has gradually worn over time is at an optimal time to repair. A squeaky bike chain is past time for cleaning and lubing. A thirsty throat is already partially dehydrated. Those are easy fixes though usually, and if you already have the supplies, nearly instant repairs to make. What's harder is seeing pants wear out, masonry decay, or street markings disappear. Some of these need specialized skills, licenses, or interaction with government. These take more time and care and sometimes convincing the maintainer it is the time to make that repair.

Especially in the case of city, county, or state infrastructure, convincing the city, county, or state that the time has come to make a repair can be a herculean task. Often the "We can't afford to do it now" excuse leads to putting off the repair, only adding to the cost. We see this in health insurance plans as well, where the insurance companies refuse to pay for preventative healthcare, leading to suffering, and often more expensive and more painful medical interventions. Typically, if you can't afford to make the repair, you definitely can't afford to skip the repair either.

I am currently thinking about this because of reading the great work by iFixit, Cory Doctorow, and others in the ongoing fight for the right to repair our own things. But also because my house does need a masonry fix, and we have some bikes in our house past the need for some regular maintenance that I have the skills, but haven't made the time for yet. The longer I wait on any of these, the harder it will be to get those things back into good repair (and the more expensive it will be).

For example, I was letting a bike chain stay squeaky for a little too long. Part of this was not noticing until I was leaving for work and not wanting to take the time to take care of it so I could get to work faster. But then I would just store the bike when I got home and not pay attention til the next day riding out again. I managed a bike shop for years and certainly know better, but it is incredibly easy to just let those little things slide. We tell ourselves "It won't hurt that much really." But that does build up over time and effectively shortens the lifespan of the chain, meaning I may have to prematurely buy a new one. Grand scheme of things, it won't cost that much, but over the lifetime of the bike (I plan to ride that thing forever), I will likely spend more on chains than I would have to if I was keeping it regularly lubed and clean. (I recommend every two weeks, 100 miles, or rainy ride, whichever comes first) And once I did lube the chain, it was easier to ride!

In Pennsylvania, due to some large federal money coming in, we are finally making some long-past-needed repairs on bridges that have been failing evaluations for years. These repairs are far more expensive than if we were doing regular maintenance on them. But like I said above, maintenance is boring. New bridges are exciting. Or novel ways to repair a collapsed highway bridge in less than two weeks when it also took two years to fix riverpath bridges with smaller repairs or more years than that to update the same highway.

In a recent piece of art I made, I expressed that it will be better for everyone to own their own home, but with prospective homeowners in Philadelphia needing an annual income of $75,000 to be able to buy and keep a home (including maintenance costs), that means that the 50% of Philadelphians who make less than $57,537 each year just do not have that as an option. Housing costs must come down. Homelessness is a policy choice. Repairing that worn-out spot of our society will certainly cost us so much more than if we had always ensured people would be housed and fed, but it is still a necessary repair.

Maintenance is boring and tedious but essential to a more sustainable and more pleasant world. We constantly feel as if we can't afford to make the repairs, but we definitely can't afford to skip the repairs either.