Calum Mackervoy

@calummackervoy.bsky.social

17 Followers 15 Following

Freelance developer, agitate in co-operatives. Interested in the semantic web & in social technics. I like writing & making games, too. More info on https://calum.mackervoy.com/

Two screens from Star Wars: Andor, shown side-by-side. In the first screen, the protagonist Cassian Andor is looking down at a radar or navigation device, and he makes the observation that it is "Hard to learn". In the second, his companion says "Yes, but once you've mastered it, you're free. We've grown too reliant on Imperial tech, and we've made ourselves vulnerable"
A screenshot of the linked article. The website is headlined "Low Tech Magazine", with the subtitle "This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline". Most of the webpage is a beige colour, while the top of the webpage is white. The line is like a battery; at the line between the two colours, the battery power of the webpage is indicated (73%), with a battery icon. As the battery drains, the colour boundary will move down the page and the battery indicator will be updated.
A circular diagram in which the space depicts economic activity. A green, doughnut-shaped "middle ground" reads, "the safe and just space for humanity", bordered on the upper limit by the text "ecological ceiling", and on the lower limit by "social foundation". The doughnut middle represents a "regenerative and distributive economy". Outside of the doughnut, in the middle, the diagram explains is a "shortfall" on economic production, with the basic necessities of life: "water, food, health, education, income & work, peace & justice, political voice, social cohesion, equality, housing, connectivity, and energy". Outside the upper limit of the ecological ceiling, aspects of the climate disaster are listed: "climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nutrient pollution, air pollution, freshwater disruption, land conversion, biodiversity breakdown, ozone layer depletion"
The interface of radio.garden, a globe with many green dots of varied sizes, representing cities and locations where radio stations are available. The map is centred on Costelloe on the West coast of Ireland, near Galway. There is a circle around the selected radio station. At this level of zoom, the circle extends around most of Ireland. There are sound controls with the time (10:44) and the name of the radio station, and there are menu controls for "Explore", "Favorites", "Browse", "Search" and "Settings". In the corner of the window there is a hot air balloon icon, a feature which lets you explore slowly and randomly across the planet, like a balloon journey.
A radial graph showing the number of games which are verified, playable, or unsupported on Linux/Steam Deck. The graph is interactive and includes tools to change the selection (displaying the top 10 most popular games by default), with another menu for cycling through what data is displayed. Four lines are displayed, ProtonDB medals, ProtonDB click-and-play, Deck Verified and Chromebook Ready. The tool is framed to appear as the screen display of a Steam Deck device.
A set of region tag instructions are displayed in an overlay window with the control options: "Generate" and "Random". In the background there is a hexagon map I made which defines the land and water boundaries for the map. The full set of tag options are as follows: barren, chaotic, civilized, difficult, evil, good, highland, lawful, lowland, perilous, safe, wetland, woodland. I selected chaotic, and perilous.
A line chart plots global capacity of solar power measured in gigawatts. From 2010 capacity starts to grow exponentially, way beyond a series of predictions drawn as lines in yellow. Actual installations have been more than 3x higher than their five year forecasts.
A computer monitor displaying the presentation slide titled: "what hype does". The centre of the slide is a statue of the Buddha, a hover car is photoshopped to be in the palm of his hand. Around him is the cycle of hype: 1. Uncertainty 2. Storytelling & Simplification 3. Legitimacy, Trust 4. Excitement & Fomo 5. Sense of Belonging 6. Attention, Investment 7. Acceleration, Commitment 8. Normalises Power 9. Disillusionment, Renewal 10. Uncertainty (we have returned to step 1) Each point on the cycle is connected by arrows, and each arrow has some more text which denotes some phenomena associated with each transition. 1. Uncertainty becomes simplification with exaggeration 2. Simplification becomes trust with the illusion of understanding 3. Trust becomes fomo with the myth of progress, and faith 4. Fomo becomes a sense of belonging with inclusion/exclusion and the silencing of alternatives 5. Sense of belonging becomes investment with media attention and urgency to act 6. Investment becomes commitment with the misallocation of resources and mainstream investment 7. Commitment normalises power with "unavoidable futures and desire" 8. Disillusionment and renewal is characteristed by an undermining of trust in science 9. And we return to the beginning of the cycle with "purge, loss and concentration"
A screenshot from the music-map site. Text is allayed on the page canvas, Johnny Cash (the search term) is in the centre. Queens of the Stone Age appears close to Johnny Cash, representing a high score. Many other artists are nearby, including the Foo Fighters, Kyuss and Fu manchu. Elvis Presely is on the map, towards the periphery where some artists like Neil Young and Ray Charles are also featured.
The graph plots a rapid rise of Stack Overflow questions leading up to the 2010s, then a slight decline until just after 2020.
A pink snowflake icon transfixed over a square grid, with a large purple background
Image is separated into two halves to emphasise the difference between: "DIY Web Revival!", which features bright colours and happy cartoon characters, contrasted with "professional moden internet" which is black-and-white and features a solitary, dejected doggo. The professional moden Internet lists our grievances with site design: 1. Approve these cookies so we can protect your data we stole 2. No gifs allowed! 3. constant autoplay sponsored ads 4. CSS used to reset elements back to flat and boring look 5. $500 million VC to make the Todo app from a tutorial 6. literally just a blank white site 7. Sorrky... your license expired 8. ISSUE #481: Docker Build UI Gem Install failed on Client NPM CI 9. Site has amazin uptime but only person to talk to is the verified M&Ms account 10. Customisation options: light, or dark DIY web revival lists: 1. Literally every inch is crammed with joy. "hi! hihi hi!!!" 2. Well defined borders help you navigate 3. Entire site is 940KB, can just be reuploaded somewhere else 4. Sparkly! 5. Guestbooks, status updates, forums 6. Thousands of friends 7. "I made this for no reason other than that it is beautiful" 8. Palatial maze for the eyes