Thoughts & Ideas posts

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I will be voting for Kamala Harris on Tuesday. I felt a positivity when she took Biden’s place. There are a lot of reasons I think it would be bad for the country if Donald Trump is elected again, but January 6th ought to be enough by itself.

It’s somewhat odd that this particular election is on Guy Fawkes Day this year, with the day’s connection to V for Vendetta and the authoritarian government it depicted.

If you are a US citizen, please vote your beliefs on or before Tuesday. It’s important.

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Our life is a giant puzzle, with a great many pieces that must be fit together to make it “right”. Each individual task, project, area of our life that we work on is its own puzzle, composed of many pieces that must be fit together while also fitting into the larger puzzle that is our life. Likewise, our life is part of a much, much larger puzzle that is the world, the universe, everything, and as we work on our life puzzle, we must look at that larger puzzle and ensure ours fits into it.

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A friend of mine was commenting that Jaws got pushback for inciting fear of sharks / swimming with the low odds of getting bit by one, while The Birds didn’t get pushback in spite of the low odds of getting attacked by a bird. I opined that it was probably Big Beach instigating the pushback. I imagine with the tourism money they have a better lobby than Big Bird.

Ideas: Cascading Behavior Sheets, a declarative alternative to JS

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I have had the idea for some time that the web ought to have a declarative format to define behavior on elements like it does for styles (CSS). It would be an alternative to JavaScript (JS) that would be as robust as CSS, simplifying adding and defining common behaviors. There are a lot of things sites do frequently that can take a fair amount of work for a new person to implement, as well as require a payload sent over the wire. For people who don’t need complications beyond standard, this could be provided by the browser with some configuration in a simple sheet. I think there should be a Cascading Behavior Sheet (CBS) standard for the web.

Potential advantages:

  • robust forward and backward compatibility like CSS
  • simpler, easier to learn format than JS
  • little to write or think about for common functionality
  • little to send over wire for common functionality
  • more performant native implementation possible
  • declarative
  • familiar syntax to CSS devs
  • simple to connect behavior broadly to chosen selectors
  • cascade, @media, @support, etc to limit which and when behaviors apply
  • automatic handling of attaching and removing behaviors when they apply / don’t, including new DOM elements
  • maintain separation of concerns that keeping JS and CSS separate provides
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Ideas: Hybrid energy storage for electric vehicles

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I would like to see electric cars adopt hybrid energy storage / generation systems. An advanced controller would direct electricity to and from each system based on which is considered best at handling the current situation. If one has failed, it would simply be cut out of usage. It might include batteries, a generator, capacitors, compressed air systems, etc. A system like this would:

  • allow for characteristics that any one system doesn’t provide
  • provide an alternative / backup for if any one system fails / degrades
  • retain the simple, low maintenance drive system that an electric vehicle has
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Ideas: Waste material as shade structures

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I saw an article about cities doing various things to reduce heat, including lighter road surfaces and planting trees. Trees provide good shade and reduce temperatures, and are generally good for the environment, but can require quite a bit of water for dry areas. I got to thinking that we could build artificial tree-like structures to provide shade. But it would require a lot of material, and it would be undesirable cost-wise and environmentally to dig up new materials for this purpose. So I wondered about building them from waste materials.

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