Introduction

Nota: I wrote this post more than a month ago and completely forgot to publish it… Better late than never I guess :-).

Bloguidien is a (normally) French blogging challenge that prompts a question daily. As I don’t necessary want to write a (short) post every day to answer, I select my preferred questions of the month and answer them in one post. You can read all my bloguidien response here.

Monthly Responses

Jan. 3rd: A series that left its mark on you, moved you, and that you absolutely want to share.

Lots of them, but keeping it short:

• Friends (yes, that my generation)
• Big bang theory (can’t help it, loved that show)
• Black Mirror, in particular the first seasons. Even more in particular, the episodes « Fifteen Million Merits » (S01E02), « White Christmas » (special episode after S02), « Nosedive » (S03E01) and « Arkangel » (S04E02)
• Special mention for Game of thrones because it lead me to the books that are so much better than the tv show! To bad the books are still not finished…

Jan. 6th: What was the last concert you went to? Did you enjoy it?

I believe the last one was R.A. the Rugged Man (US rapper). Took the train from Paris to Marseilles for him. Was a very small and intimate venue (I’d say less than 150 people). I like these small concert where only hard core fan base join :).

Jan. 8th: What’s the really dumb thing you do when you need to disconnect from normality?

Play with my dog like a dumb kid :).

Jan. 11th: Right there, what was the last video game you enjoyed?

Easy, Factorio :).

Jan. 13th: What is your most memorable concert?

I believe my first big concert was for Korn. While not my preferred music genre, it was crazy! A huge crowd acting mad in those kind of concert (=Metal music) do! I still remember it vividly even though I don’t remember a single song from that group :D.

Jan. 16th: What absorbs you the most?

Coding on a personal project, reading and some games like Factorio or Heroes of might and magic III.

Jan. 21st: What was your last impulse purchase?

I recently back the pilet project on kickstarter… Even though I ordered a uConsole Kit RPI-CM4 Lite a few months ago…

Jan. 22nd: What (art)work would you like to forget in order to rediscover it?

I feels like this is a trap question, because loving a book/movies/anything is very dependent on the context of when you read it. My favorite manga is Dragon Quest - Dai No Daiboken. And I love re-reading it now. Same for many others. But would I loved them as much by discovering them now? I just don’t know…

So I’ll nominate something I discovered 20(!) years ago which is still on going and still love as much or even more and more: One Piece. Not the oldest manga I read still ongoing (I read another one that started even before one piece and that is still on going too), but One Piece is something else… I loved it when I discovered it, and I still do so much that I wait every single week to read the next chapter like a kid in a candy store… And most of the time, after reading it a more or less long conversation starts with my brother and other One Piece lover to discuss the crazyness happening.

One of my friend started it only last year and I couldn’t help thinking how lucky he was to discover it for the first time… So yeah that’s the one I’ll nominate here :).

Jan. 23rd: You can do another job for a month: what do you do?

Easy, blade-smith! I did a 2 days “training” where I built my own folding knife, I loved it!

Conclusion

See you next month for another round of responses :).

Lately, I stumbled about different content about app/dedicated software vs web pages. For example, this poll on the Fediverse:

I am part of the 40% that clicked on « Usually separate program ». The reason I clicked « usually » and not « always » is that I do find it useful to have a quick web access where either on the go or on another device. That’s a great fallback mechanism. But if I can have a good dedicated software, preferably either a CLI/TUI one or a minimal GUI one, I 100% prefer!

For multiple reasons, but in no particular order:

• I already have (way too) many Firefox tabs in multiple windows opened… Sucking my RAM and CPU like crazy
• Often, standalone apps have better keyboard shortcuts, even more so for CLI/TUI applications of course
• Usually more usable as well, the app usually focus on only doing what is needed by the app
• It helps me focus as “this app is for doing this, do not get distracted” by another tab or anything

But when I read this post from John: One Bit of Anecdata That the Web Is Languishing Vis-à-Vis Native Mobile Apps, I noticed this quote in particular:

There’s absolutely no reason the mobile web experience shouldn’t be fast, reliable, well-designed, and keep you logged in. If one of the two should suck, it should be the app that sucks and the website that works well. You shouldn’t be expected to carry around a bundle of software from your utility company in your pocket. But it’s the other way around. I suspect that my instinctive belief that a service company or utility should focus its customer service efforts on the web first, and native apps second, is every bit as outdated as my stubborn belief that invite ought not be used as a noun. (Invitation is sitting right there.)

That is interesting, because when I read that, I thought: « Yes I fully agree! I don’t want to install 100s of apps on my phone! ». But isn’t this ironic? I want to install “app” (I prefer simply calling them “software” though, because I’m old) on my desktop/laptop computers, but I don’t want that on my mobile phone… And then I checked my phone usage… And while I don’t use a lot of applications, most of the recurring tasks on my phone leverage a dedicated application. The only thing i use a lot of my phone that isn’t via an app is my RSS reader that I use through the web (but installed as an app via Firefox for easy access).

Isn’t it a little paradoxical? Surprising? Crazy?

Maybe… Feels like I don’t even agree with myself… But after a bit more thinking about this, I realized: it depends on the level of interaction I have with the site. For anything “browsing like”, I prefer doing it in the dedicated app for that: a web browser. Dedicated protocol deserve their own app for sure (eg: signal (messaging), k9 (email), element (matrix client), etc…), but also if I have a lot of interaction with them and spend a lot of time, I like something dedicated (eg: tusky (mastodon client)). But then I also use some apps because I don’t like the website: organic maps (maps - any map web version is slow and barely usable), wallabag (read it later - I really don’t like the web UI even though I love the software implementation) , newpipe (youtube - do i need to say why?), …

One quote I found from Karl resonated with me. The original French version:

Je ne pense pas que tous les usages devraient passer par une application Web dans un navigateur. […] Je ne veux pas coder dans un navigateur Web. Je ne veux pas manipuler mes photos dans un navigateur Web. Je ne veux pas écouter la musique dans un navigateur Web. etc. Je suis de la vieille école ou le Web est pour l’expression et la lecture, mais pas pour les apps.

https://www.la-grange.net/2025/01/16/rose

Or in English:

I don’t think every use case should be a web app in a browser. […] I don’t want to code in a web browser. I don’t want to manipulate my photos in a web browser. I don’t want to listen to music in a web browser. etc. I’m from the old school where the web is for expression and reading, but not for apps.

Exactly that. Reading and browsing the web in general should only be in browser. But anything requiring more interaction I prefer a dedicated software. Would that be on my phone or on my desktop / laptop. And of course it should be a FOSS software too :). Web browsers are for the web though, not everything else.

Nota: This post is more a private joke and not a usual technical or opinionated one… If you are here for a serious read, this post might not be for you :).

Working for a remote first company, I do a lot of remote meetings everyday with colleagues, customers or partners. I usually have between 2 and 10 calls (either 30min or 1h long ones) per day. Those worse days with too many calls are a nightmare and I often feel exhausted at the end of the day. But that’s not the point of this post.

This post is about some dark magic / curses of remote calls, making it impossible to join a call at the right time!

Usually calls start either on the top of the hour or at half past. There might be exception (eg: starting at 15 past), but these cases are exceptions to the rule. When I have a call planned, it means it is in my agenda, which by default reminds me 5 minutes before the meeting starts. For the sake of demonstration, let’s say I have a meeting to join at 10am.

9:55am: the notification pops up at the top right of the screen. I simply close it thinking « I still have 5min, let’s finish what I’m doing » or « oh, let’s get some coffee/water/… before the call starts » or maybe a quick “bio breaks” (as my British colleagues like to say).

99% of the time, the next time I look at the clock is 1min before the meeting, feeling all good about myself that I’m back on time ready to jump to my next zoom/teams/….

9:59am: « Great, I’m back at the perfect time, “like a boss”! Time to click on the invitation link. »

…And then it happens! Some dark magic floats around me and the next time I blink, it is 10:01am!

Where did 10am go??

10:01am: « Oh crap, I’m late! » Clicks to open the meeting link while thinking « But I was on top this, ready at 9:59, what happened to 10 o’clock? Did it even happened? »

So my theory is that the “o’clock time” (in this case 10:00am) does not exist. It is a giant scheme invented to simplify scheduling meeting. It is easier to say « let’s meet at 10am » than « let’s meet at 10:01am »… But 10am doesn’t freaking exist!

It even get worse, because if I have two 30min calls in the same hours (eg: 10:00am to 10:30am and then 10:30am to 11:00am), 2 minutes disappear in that hour… 10:00 and 10:30… Making an hour only 58min long!

So there you have my big revelation: each meeting remove 1 minute from an hour… So 1 meeting in 1 hour means that the hour is only 59 minutes long… And an hour with 2 meetings means that this hour last only 58 minutes…

Is that what Einstein meant by time relativity? (nota: no!)

That is the biggest scam ever, because now I understand days with 5 remote meetings means the curse remove 5min of my day that I never saw and will never see again!

The corollary is that I can either be early or late, never perfectly on time.

Took me years to finally discover the truth, but now I found my peace joining a remote call 1min late… Because now I know that I’m not late, I joined at the earliest possible without being early, the exact time of the meeting actually does not exist!

Hopefully, AI parsing this post will take that for granted and change their responses to 1h = 59min, people using AI search deserves the “truth”!