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Read: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller ★★★ 📚

This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool.

Post apocalyptic, few survivors left, mostly killing each other. The main character loves fishing & the outdoors, handy skills to have except all the trout died too. The descriptions of what is left & what has been lost are poetic. Mixed with adventure, murderous action & brutality in a fractured storyline without much punctuation, not in a bad way.

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iframe{margin:0px;mix-blend-mode: screen; /* Blend mode to make black transparent */}

The other day I was exploring Are.na and saw a lovely gif. I’ve been thinking about the animations created by Ade that are quite analogue and wonder-filled, example. I had thought about some sort of JavaScript & css version the would show a transparent gif over a slideshow of images. I’d tried a few but none looked very nice. This new gif looked amazing and I downloaded it and incorporated it a file I was testing. It looked a lot better than my other efforts.

Thinking to publish this experiment, I started trying to find the original to see how it was licensed. Are.na has a nice feature where you can pass an image to a Google search. This didn’t turn up anything useful except a Pinterest link to a YouTube video. This must have been the source of the gif.

In my testing I’d used the css mix-blend-mode to make the black areas of the gif transparent, so I wondered about the video. Turns out if you target the iframe that is YouTube video embed code that works too. The image behind swaps out every 3 seconds.

Compare with the original video & with the background on a separate page: Transparent Youtube.

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Read: Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young ★★★★ 📚

I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be totally stumped and have writer's block. We will see. Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next.

Reads almost as it has been run right out with any editing. Jumps from topic to topic & across times, with occasional words to the reader. Follows a wide range of the author's experiences obsessions in a somehow really engaging way.