The Sailor Compass is a pen

I got the Sailor Compass 1911 as a Christmas gift. It's been on my radar because it's the least expensive Sailor pen, and it looks nice. It's the budget version of the significantly pricier Sailor 1911, which has a gold nib instead.

The Compass is made of clear colored plastic that has the fun kitsch of early 2000s technology without looking cheap. It comes in a wide array of fun colors, but I had my eye on the olive for obvious reasons. It even comes with a matching green converter.

A photo of the Sailor Compass
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Every image gallery sucks (except mine)

Image gallery frameworks! They're everywhere! And yet I haven't found even one that doesn't suck. They're clunky at best and inaccessible at worst.

Here is a sampler of issues I've encountered on various image galleries:

  • Requires Javascript to work (clunky, inaccessible)
  • Doesn't have alt text (inaccessible)
  • Lightboxes (clunky, usually inaccessible, probably requires Javascript)
  • Just a bunch of thumbnails that link to image files (inaccessible)
  • Images open in a tooltip (worse than lightboxes in every conceivable way)

There must be a better way. Right???

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House bugs

I recently had a conversation where the topic of discussion was a giant house spider. One person had spent their night chasing it around and finally trapped it under a trash can, only for the spider to escape by morning. Lamentation about the spider becoming a permanent member of the household ensued.

Wait, the giant house spider has the word "house" in its name. That's weird...

It's nice to think our homes are sterile boxes distinct from "outside," with the exception of the occasional unwanted intruder. If you find something from the outside in your house, you're probably going to kill it. Maybe you'll take it outside because you think that's the more humane route. Both actions are missing the point. The point: There are lots of animals (most of them spineless) whose "natural" habitat is now human settlements.

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Your website needs to work on phones

All the "old web revival" and "nostalgia" rhetoric that's prevalent in the small web world these days has come with a healthy dose of not giving a shit about responsiveness or, at minimum, making sure your website is functional on all screen sizes. People in the 90s and 00s didn't have to design for phones, so why should I? Phones are evil! I hate phones!

Regardless of how you feel about smartphones, they're not going anywhere. Sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending we live in the pre-smartphone era is futile. Get over yourself and accept that your website needs to work on phones.

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Mind your needles

Hercules beetle and banana eel pin needleminders

I made some needleminders with some unused enamel pins (from Fossil Forager) I had lying around. This is entirely as simple as it sounds: you pull the pointy part off and superglue a magnet on. If you're working with a magnetic pin, you'll have to stick magnets to both sides to stick a needle onto the front. (Not great for aesthetics, but I don't care about that!)

I don't have much use for pins, but the magnets don't compromise wearability, so you could still use pins that you've converted in this way. If anything, the magnets are probably beneficial since neodymium magnets are ludicrously sticky.