Will Angley

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Words of the day: social distancing light

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My sister Sam and I were out walking around Leesburg and trying to keep our distance from people. Most of the people we walked by were trying to do the same, but not as many as we would have liked. We don’t want our parents to get sick.

Then I decided to try an experiment. I thought it was going to get dark earlier than it actually did, so I had a headlamp. I put it on:

objects smaller than actual size, awkwardness enlarged to show texture

and people then pretty reliably kept their distance. I wasn’t 100% sure though, so I tried it again another night, with similar results and more haiku.

Sam then said, “omg, it’s a social distancing light. love it.” and I’m inclined to agree.

Words of the day: green leafy foliage

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It’s purple prose for “plants you’re about to walk or drive into.” My family has been using it for the last fifteen years.

This branch overhanging a sidewalk:

becomes green leafy foliage if you walk into it while writing a haiku.

People are filling out my contact form! Does this mean I’m Internet famous?

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When I saw the subject lines:

WordPress Email System[Will Angley] Contact – Name: …
WordPress Email System[Will Angley] Contact – Name: …

in my inbox I was hopeful for a moment. Then I opened the messages and saw they were offering to submit ads in other sites’ contact forms for me.

This seemed like something that could backfire if I used it to advertise my personal blog; spamming my boss is not a career enhancing move. I passed.

My next reaction, after that, was “omg, this is exciting! I’m having a spam problem now! What cool technology can I use to fight it‽”

Then I remembered I was already using one; my contact form is protected by Akismet. I clicked around through the WordPress Admin until I found Akismet’s stats:

Thanks, Akismet!

showing that I’ve been getting 75-90 messages a month, almost all blatant spam.

In hindsight I’m not surprised. Email spam is a hard problem, and contact form spam is in some ways harder; Akismet is doing really well here.

I know that big sites often need to do more to fight spam, using techniques like honeypot form fields (which look different to spam-writing robots than they do to humans), CAPTCHAs, and bot defense software that pokes at browsers to see if they look like they’re being used by people.

But willangley.org isn’t that big, and I like knowing I’m not breaking for readers who use content blockers, so I think I’ll leave things alone until I actually want to work on my contact form again 😛

Words of the day: food-conditioned

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Food conditioning happens when wild animals learn to eat human food. It’s most often used when talking about bears; learning to eat food left behind by people increases the likelihood that bears will come into conflict with people later.

People who think about this for a living make videos like this:

They’re deadly serious, but they’re also hard not to laugh at: their subject matter is, after all, a bear that loves garbage so much it might get shot.

Making matters worse, I promptly saw the analogy:

air conditioned : air conditioner :: food conditioned : food conditioner

where a food conditioner is a garbage can. It’s possibly the silliest way to refer to a garbage can that I can think of, and it’s hard not to laugh at that too.

And thus, food conditioned is my word(s) of the day.

Mountain Views

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I made it out to California for a trip in February, right before everything shut down, and had enough time there to take some pictures of Apple Park and the Googleplex.

I bought some film in San Jose, and headed straight to the

Apple Park Visitor Center

which was the only part of Apple Park they’d let me into to get pictures of. It had a good view of the headquarters building, carefully managed so you could see the architecture but nothing more.

Sunnyvale

After Apple Park, I went to the Google Cloud offices in Sunnyvale. I couldn’t find any clouds to take pictures of, but I did find sunny vales…

and an Event Center…

and this really striking seating area under a sculpture at Tech Corners.

Googleplex

I don’t think I’ve ever made it to the South Bay without going to the Googleplex in Mountain View, and this trip was no exception. (I’m not sure about anyone else, but I think this is pretty normal when you work for Google.)

The eastern part of the Googleplex has redwoods, fountains, and colorful Google bikes.

I then walked westwards towards the evening sun, and found a new building going up.

I couldn’t get in there either, but it looks like it’s going to be awesome. Then I kept walking until I ran out of film and/or daylight. (Which happened at the same time this time.)

I found that you really can see mountains from the Google campus in Mountain View, if you know where to look. (South on the Permanente Creek Trail.)

Mountain View: it’s not just a metaphor

I miss being there already. I wonder if they miss me too:

Manhattanhenge

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Four times a year, the sun sets exactly in line with Manhattan’s east-west streets. This year I went out to Union Square with a group of Googlers to take photos, and it was awesome. I’d forgotten it was Manhattanhenge, so the only camera I had was a Pixel XL.

At Union Square, the sun starts out hidden behind buildings, and the only way you knew it wasn’t a normal sunset were all the extra people:

Another minute, and the street filled up every time traffic stopped.

Sunset arrived!

The sunset lasted for ten minutes. It overwhelmed my Pixel’s camera until it was about to touch the horizon, and then the disk popped into view.

And then it was done, and we left for quieter streets.