Some authors use footnotes too much. This usually takes the following form:

An exciting story on a subject ¹, blah-blah.

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1. Another exciting story on the same subject. Or the boring details on the subject. Or an explanation on why some of the details are not actually true and how it does not matter.

How am I supposed to read this? Does the author want me to scroll down every time I see a superscripted number to read the footnote? Or should I ignore it?

When I follow a footnote, I lose track of the main narrative. This is no surprise, for if the footnote’s content fitted the main line, it would not have ended up in a footnote, and I would not have to scroll back and forth. So when I return from the footnote, I back up a bit to get back on track. When I encounter the same footnote again, I can finally connect the dots. Not exactly a smooth reading experience.

When I ignore a footnote, I feel I am missing something. And many writers prove me right: when I finish reading and glance over the footnotes, I often find them worth reading. This makes me re-read the parts of the main text to figure out how the footnote is related to it. Then I can finally connect the dots. Not a smooth reading experience either.

Galileo Galilei’s book, a scan from the Edward Tufte forums.

In a book, where no scrolling is involved, footnotes are not as irritating as on the web. But a good designer will still avoid them, prefering sidenotes, as on the spread above. They require no meaningless numbers, you just place them beside the relevant text. This design helps a reader quickly check out whether a note is worth his attention and continue reading practically uninterrupted.

If you use the parallel narrative often, this is what you should look into. However, most of the time footnotes on the web are a sign of inconsistent writing.

Uvildy is a lake about 100 km from my home city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. In winter, it freezes over. Where there is no snow on the surface, the transparent ice looks stunning.

I have made a video today:

And also took several pictures (original size; right-click to save and use as wallpaper, if you like):

Camera: iPhone 5s.

Check out my new dark psytrance / new school hard goa mix, Locket Rauncher.

I am not a huge fan of dark psy in general, but these fourty-two pieces are really great. This is very fast music, by which I mean that there is a lot going on at any given moment. So you need to concentrate to get it. If you play it in background, it will be just noise (for an unprepared ear at least).

The tracklist is:

1. Cactus: We Love Radio
2. Jaws Underground: Algorythme
3. Penta: Tollkorn
4. Skazi: Are You Still There
5. Rev: Locket Rauncher
6. Digital Talk: New Age Surf
7. Benza: Duck And Cover
8. Ocelot: Disappear
9. Ninth Of Kin: Gravity Breaker (Inverse Axiomatics, 2012)
10. Audiosex: Virtual Medicine
11. Derango: Confusion is Next
12. Gappeq: The Torque
13. Mubali: Spacial Distortion
14. Ocelot: Upward Spiral
15. Toï Doï: Fonction d’onde
16. Flyh: Sputnik
17. Baal: No Window
18. Syntax Error: Bitmap Bugs
19. Kashyyyk: Charly And Ervin
20. Gappeq: Tower Of Babel
21. Phi: Everything Never Can’t Stop Us, Dude
22. Jaws Underground: Johnny Got Is Gun
23. Gappeq: Mobius Strip
24. Slum: Sneak, Beneath My Notice
25. Highko & Looping: Chillout (Beloochi Remix by Psykovsky)
26. Sienis: Phinary
27. Time Lock: Flying
28. Crownick: Petrified
29. Toï Doï: Saturnday
30. Sienis: High Frequency Science
31. Crownick: Acoustical Veins
32. Scorb: Mutoid (Extended Version)
33. Tamlin: Fjaqek
34. CCL: LF-Ants
35. Meteloids: 48 Krunchy
36. Psykovsky: Suddenly
37. Fungus Funk: Metropolis (Robot Empire) (Propaganda Remix by Psykovsky)
38. Tutankhamon 9000: Lost In Luxor
39. Psyside: Hysteria
40. CCL: Unleash The Beast
41. Digital Talk: Abyss
42. Sabretooth: Smooth Hound

Enjoy the music.

There will be no privacy in the future.

It does not matter whether you think it is good or bad. Maybe you truly believe that privacy is a basic human right and should be respected and protected. But who cares about your beliefs? I like privacy myself, so what? Technology will make this concept obsolete: there will just be no such thing soon.

When technology makes possible something people want but has side effects, first it happens, then people learn to deal with side effects. People pirate music and videos, even if copyright owners disagree. Kids watch porn, even if their parents would prefer them not to. Terrorists plan attacks online, even if others object.

Freaked out about Google Glass? Yes, it is ugly and people who think it is the future are crazy. In reality, future is when what Glass does today will be happening without Glass. People will be constantly recording live video of everything they see. The video will be instantly made available to everyone. The software will be able to do face recognition on that video (by the way, the delivery drones will also be recording video). You will not be able to stop the spread of private information. Basically, at some point you will have a 3D model of the whole world where you will be able to look at anything at any angle or distance, live. And you will be able to search it and run any analysis on it.

Everyone will be able to learn where you are and what you are doing at any moment. And where you have been. And with whom. Everyone will be able to see you taking shower and shaving your balls. They will be able to capture a video clip and share with others. You do not like it, I do not like it, but it will happen.

If you spend time trying to protect privacy with the law, you are as stupid as copyright owners spending the time to shut down torrent trackers. Future is inevitable, and you are just being in denial. When you stop technology with law, this means that you restrict access to that technology to governments and grant them the right to use violence to everyone else who tries to use it. If you let governments enforce privacy on your behalf, they will do their best to make sure you do not have access to private data, but they do. NSA will be happy.

Protecting privacy with the law is a bad idea.

Now suppose there is technology that lets your friend spy upon you having sex. Then there should also be technology to check out who has been spying. Thus, while you cannot stop someone from spying, they will think twice before risking to ruin your relationship.

To adapt to the new world, first you make sure the new rules are for everyone, then you think how to use them in your own self-interest.

When a web page is loading, images appear in random order, causing unpleasant flashing. Good web developers have learned to deal with the issue by coordinating things with Javascript.

An example would be Apple’s Mac page, where an animated spinner is displayed on top for a couple of seconds, and when the menu items are ready, they appear with a nice animation.

Since coordinating the load process requires tedious programming, it is not what many people choose to do. There are tools which simplify the task to some extent, however the very necessity of programming is a dead end for most people.

Emerge.js changes this.

Emerge.js is a framework for coordinated page loading. It simplifies the task by removing the need to write any Javascript code. The framework uses a declarative approach, where you specify a desired behavior for each element and do not think about the implementation. To make an HTML element wait for its content to load before emerging, use:

class="emerge"

Elements of class emerge fade in after all the contained images are loaded (this includes CSS images). To display an animated spinner while loading, use:

data-spin="true"

The framework lets you coordinate the order and timing and use different animation effects as you see fit, for instance:

data-effect="slide"
data-await="other-element-id"

Check out the product page for detailed description.