Haiku Day 30/30

Day 30:

Sometimes the best thing
It's not the best thing for you
That is also fine

Haiku Day 29/30

Day 29:

Constant improvement
Not quite there yet, bit by bit
Over and over

(oops, i fell asleep)

Haiku Day 28/30

Day 28:

You should just shut up.
You're so good at being wrong.
Did you practice it?

Haiku Day 27/30

Day 27:

Handwritten letters
Quickly scribbled depictions
Marks of happenings

Haiku Day 26/30

Day 26:

Ineffectual
Offering my best support
Nothing I can do

Haiku Day 25/30

Day 25:

Anticipation
Slowly sneaking up on you
Not ready quite yet

Haiku Day 24/30

Day 24:

Some recognition
Rewarded and acknowledged
Keep on keeping on

Haiku Day 23/30

Day 23:

Too good to be true
Disbelief not suspended
Better luck next time

Haiku Day 22/30

Day 22:

I'm inadequate
Nothing's ever good enough
Impostor syndrome

Haiku Day 21/30

Day 21:

Cool, calm, collected
Dramatists deftly dueling
Everyday easy

Haiku Day 20/30

Day 20:

Birthdays and birthmarks
Marks of age and marks of skin
Similar but not

Haiku Day 19/30

Early morning light
Shadows crawling long and low
See you tomorrow

Haiku Day 18/30

Day 18:

Old friends catching up
Familiar conversation
Some things never change

(Oops, this one's late, but if I was in a hypothetical UTC-12 time zone, this would be on time...)

Haiku Day 17/30

Day 17:

There are bad ideas
And then there are bad ideas
That's a bad idea

Haiku Day 16/30

Day 16:

Still counting heartbeats
Waiting for you endlessly
Day and night and day

Haiku Day 15/30

Day 15:

Locally-grown food
Prepared with dedication
Always gets results

Haiku Day 14/30

Day 14:

Remember these days
How it felt in the sunshine
Warm fire glowing

Haiku Day 13/30

Day 13:

Comfortable feel
Warm, inviting memory
Long live the joker

Haiku Day 12/30

Day 12:

Up and down and up
Vicissitudes of feelings
Never quite settled

Haiku Day 11/30

Day 11:

Fragile promises
Words not kept meet broken dawn
Say it then do it

Haiku Day 10/30

Day 10:

Addressing the day
Motion makes meaning exist
Wake up sleepyhead

Haiku Day 9/30

Day 9:

I don't believe you
When you say it's not worth it
Nothing matters more

Haiku Day 8/30

Day 8:

Surprises are scarce
This one hit me like a truck
Never going back

Haiku Day 7/30

Day 7:

Making and breaking
Joined together, far apart
Inseparable

Haiku Day 6/30

Day 6:

Living in the past
Useless thoughts still lingering
Making my future

Haiku Day 5/30

Day 5:

Dreams come and they go
Don't forget to remember
New reality

Haiku Day 4/30

Day 4:

Hearing your sweet voice

Nothing ever sounds the same

I still get goosebumps

Haiku Day 3/30

Day 3:

Maybe it can wait
Another week couldn't hurt
Procrastination

Haiku Day 2/30

Day 2:

Hoping against hope
Life can surprise you sometimes
Awesome victory

30 Day Challenge: National Poetry Month Edition (Day 1)

It's been a while since I tried doing a 30-day challenge, so I'm doing one this month. I had this idea a few weeks ago about writing a haiku every day, so when I learned that April is National Poetry Month, it seemed only natural to do it now.

Day 1: Blue

Blue is my fav'rite
So calm, so cool, so serene
I should marry Blue

Sharing: Then & Now

In a time when the world was less digital, we shared real things around. You could tell a well-loved book from a freshly-printed one. The yellowing in the paper, the cracks in the spine, and the dog-eared pages (perish the thought!) were all dead giveaways.

These days, sharing digitally, books aren't handed from person to person. When you give your friend a PDF, you're not even giving it away. You're giving them a clone of it - perfectly preserved bit-for-bit identical.

The original text is as-intended, but in doing so, we lose out on the tiny details. You won't find grains of sand in the pages reminding you of that lazy trip to the beach you took last summer. The tears you wept when reading a particularly-touching passage don't stain your pages. And certainly no heartfelt inscription from your best friend blemishes pristine inside cover. From the first reading to the thousandth, everything is exactly the same.

But sometimes, even digitally, there are signs of wear and tear.

You see them in your email from a mile away. FW:FW:RE:RE:FW:FW:RE:haha this is so funny!

You see them in videos. Whether it be from someone using their phone to take a Snapchat (or whatever the kids these days are up to) of their TV or a square aspect-ratio video letting you know it came from Instagram (from back in the day).

You see them in images, too. Small images get blown up, leaving their imperfections for the world to see. JPEG compression tortures black and white diagrams into producing greys.

So, yeah, basically I wrote this post because I saw a stupidly-compressed text-as-image post on Twitter and it made me kind of mad... and then it made me think.

Towards a Mobile-Friendly, SEO-optimized Blog

A few months ago, Google announced that they'd be updating their mobile-friendly test, penalizing sites which present app install banners over the main mobile content. I didn't have any mobile apps to promote, so this change would only affect me as a user, not a site owner. I promptly forgot about it.

But if that's where the story ended, this would be a tiny blog post!

Shortly after the change went into effect, I received an email with the subject of "App install interstitials that hide content found on http://blog.ryanbraganza.com/" What was going on?

 

I opened up my blog on my phone and, as expected, I didn't see any app install interstitials. I did see something curious, however. When my blog loaded, my most recent post would slide in from the bottom - up and over the second-most recent post. It wasn't that I had an app install banner obscuring my content, it was my content that was doing the "obscuring!"

I chose a different theme, reran the "Mobile Friendly Test" and now all is well.