James Aylett

@james

He/him. Thinking about books & art & narrative & drama ... and the future. Previously professionally worried about privacy and AI (now only in a personal capacity). If I don't follow you it doesn't mean I don't like you.

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Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir james.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

James Aylett@james· 22d

Damn, John Wyndham.

Uncle Axel shook his head disapprovingly again. 'Women like to think they're in love when they want to marry; they feel it's a justification which helps their self-respect,' [he ...]

James Aylett@james· 27d

Sometimes it's really easy to spot something that's slipped past the phishing filter.

A screenshot from an email client of a subject line that is intended to be read as "Reminder: You have a new message!" but has spaces in places you don't expect, leaving it as "Y o u h a v e a n e w m e s sa ge !"

James Aylett@james· 29d

These are not stage times.

A screenshot of a webpage section with the heading "Stage Times", containing two times: doors at 7pm, curfew at 11pm, and a note that "stage times are subject to change and published where available". It is unclear whether door and curfew times are subject to change (in theory door times can change) or whether they might be unavailable in some circumstances, such as close to a scheduled Apocalypse.

James Aylett@james· Jun 23

Apparently it's time for the adverts shoved into Deliveroo to turn into borderline scams, which presumably means that sector is running incredibly distressed inventory and is nowhere meeting investor expectations. What happens after that?

An ad with a headline "£20.50 cash back!", but if you read the fine print it turns out you have to pay £18 per month to join some undescribed "third party partner programme" called Complete Savings that could be raising funds to burn down forests, or kidnap cute dogs, or just scam you out of your savings. And then you get the cashback *next* time you order from Deliveroo. It's marked bottom right as "sponsored", with a disclaimer that the £20.50 value is nothing to do with how much I spent with Deliveroo, and presumably someone at Deliveroo hopes that this is enough to avoid any blowback if the entire "partner programme" turns out to be illegal.

James Aylett@james· May 7

Adventures in accessibility

A screen from a webpage where images haven't loaded but the alt text is much longer than the image boxes. In blue text on white, down the side of the image reads "An image of" five times, giving an impression of infinite regress or some kind of philosophical statement.

James Aylett@james· Apr 25

Found forgotten in my notebook from Eastercon and now have no idea what to do with it, so... happy Saturday I guess. Skeletal fingers pushing on my collar bone Reminding me of the ghosts that live out there in the forest They have no mouths or bodies any more Just fingers, and breath on my cheek

A very rough sketch by fountain pen of a slightly built person from shoulders up. They have a strong jawline and long hair and are looking at you with slightly unfocussed eyes although that may be because the ink lines are too thick for the size of sketch.

James Aylett@james· Apr 14

A screenshot from an email where images haven't loaded (because who loads images in emails?). Text in black on white at the top says "rate your experience" followed by four square boxes with a broken image indicator and no way to differentiate them. Tag yourself. I'm the broken image that's just left of centre.

James Aylett@james· Apr 13

If you work for a company that values source code (eg as training data) and use a web scraper to get it, you need to go sit in a hole until you're sorry. This is from a website that just presents information about a few git repos. They don't change enough to justify the access volume.

A graph with a time axis, showing approximately the last six months. Until some point after the "January 2026" label, there are little spikes. After, it's more like a craggy cliff face ascending into the clouds, several times higher than the earlier little spikes.

James Aylett@james· Mar 11

First experiment. Light and shadow are grungy, but I haven't built a proper frame / stage so there wasn't an easy way to control the lighting, which is famously-controllable sunlight. Her arm looks like a flute. She may actually be an alien.

A drawn / shadow cast scene of a man prostrate in front of his queen. He is on the left, kneeling with his face pressed to the floor, his arms pointing straight up with palms towards his queen. She sits on a solid chair, pointing beyond him (as if banishing him) with a skinny arm. What appears to be hair flows back from her head as if blown by wind. Her face could be aristocratic, slightly aliens, or possibly the faceplate of a helmet. She's wearing pointy boots that probably hurt her feet, unless her feet are as skinny as her arm in which case she's fine. The figures and chair are silhouettes and appear as translucent browns, her lighter and more translucent and him darker and more solid. Beneath them is a scrubby brown floor, on either side are red curtains, and at the top of the image is a blue drape making the framing feel a little like a proscenium. There is a lot of light coming in from the top right, washing out the drapes and curtains, and causing the different colours and translucency of the figures.

The same as the previous image, but the man is now reaching his arms towards the queen, as if beseeching her not to banish him. The light is more event, so both figures are brown and the drapes are not washed out.

Full description:

A drawn / shadow cast scene of a man prostrate in front of his queen. He is on the left, kneeling with his face pressed to the floor, his arms pointing forward towards his queen. She sits on a solid chair, pointing beyond him (as if banishing him) with a skinny arm. What appears to be hair flows back from her head as if blown by wind. Her face could be aristocratic, slightly aliens, or possibly the faceplate of a helmet. She's wearing pointy boots that probably hurt her feet, unless her feet are as skinny as her arm in which case she's fine. The figures and chair are silhouettes, and appear as translucent brown. Beneath them is a scrubby brown floor, on either side are red curtains, and at the top of the image is a blue drape making the framing feel a little like a proscenium.

A high angle shot showing the scene screen suspended vertically between two wine bottles, resting on a large white art pad. This is all on a wooden table, with scissors, tape, and string visible towards the top of the photo. Strong light from the top right causes everything to cast dark shadows, particularly the scene itself whose shadow is medium grey, stretching down and to the right. It is impossible to make out the figures in the shadow, but they are just visible in the screen itself.

The figures being constructed: both figures have been cut out of white card and sit on a green cutting pad with white grid lines. There are pencil marks visible near some edges, because my cutting isn't particularly accurate. The thin arm of the queen is visibly raised off the plane of the rest of the figure, casting a small shadow beneath it. Similarly, the arm of the prone figure sits on top of the rest of the figure and casts a small shadow.

James Aylett@james· Mar 11

Let's gooooo! #onwednesdayswemakeart

A hardback copy of Puppets and Puppet Theatre by David Currell lies on a light wooden table. The book cover depicts several puppets (I believe they are all marionettes) made by John Wright for Little Angel Theatre, photographed by John Roberts.

James Aylett@james· Feb 16

I had the tube / cylinder Head bag, but in turquoise and ... maybe grey like the colours on this different Head bag (mine had the detachable bit in turquoise, like the red end in the QP): www.ebay.co.uk/itm/16692195...

James Aylett@james· Feb 3

The Anakin and Padme 4 panel meme. They are sitting in a field of tall grass and are both dressed like space hippies as imagined by George Lucas.

1. Anakin, looking smug like he's just invented pizzas: "We're going to organise the world's information"
2. Padme, happy that the love of her life not only has a goal in life but is comfortable sharing it with him: "to help people use it, right?"
3. Anakin looks serious, like he's remembered that the perfect pizza involves sacrificing your morals and everyone you have ever held dear to you, but that he has long ago decided that pizza is more important. He says nothing.
4. Padme, who is now not smiling - as if a cold wind has blown across her soul: "to help people use it, right?"

James Aylett@james· Jan 26

I'm on the Google Calendar login page. (And once I've logged in I'm going to create an event setting aside time to set up my own damn CalDav server, I don't care how stupid that is.)

An attention-getting UI element for a Google chat widget. To the right is the chat launcher, a "conversation" icon in white on a blue circular background. To its left is a white rounded rectangle with a grey border and black text on white acting as a speech bubble: "Hi there 👋 What brings you to Google Workspace today?" There is a white-on-grey 'x' button to the top left of the speech bubble, presumably to close the speech bubble but not remove the chat launcher.

James Aylett@james· Jan 14

I'm at a Japanese fusion* restaurant that has understandably shaded towards a minimalist style (see picture 1), but unaccountably has just one round table when all the others are square. * Fusion so far encompassing Canarian and Mexican influences, but let's see where this goes

A place sitting, photographed from above. A napkin folded and placed with the long end horizontal in the photo sits at the bottom, a stone cup containing water top left, and a pair of chopsticks on a stone rest is in the center with the rest to the left, the chopsticks again horizontal in the photo. They are laid out simply but pleasingly. Everything is white except the chopsticks which are brown. They all sit on a lighter brown wood table, with a visible grain running top to bottom of the image. There are shadows below and to the right of each object, most evident for the water cup.

James Aylett@james· Jan 5

No for fuck's sake what even if going on here?

"Gender" selector on a website with options "Male", "Female", "Intersex", "Prefer Not To Say".

James Aylett@james· Jan 3

New year, new utterly fucked up email preferences (that I noticed right now, I assume it's been around for ages).

James Aylett@james· Dec 30

WTAF, Windows? (You can minimise the inner window, too.)

A Window in Windows that contains a Window. This is a screenshot of the top right "control" portion of a Windows 11 window, with minimise, maximise and close buttons in pale grey on dark grey. Immediately below it is another set of window controls, in the earlier colour sccheme of white with dark grey borders on the icons, with the buttons being very pale blue with a slightly less dark grey border. This is Windows inception: a Windows 10/11 window containing a window emulating an earlier version of Windows.

James Aylett@james· Dec 20

Oh no...

The poster for the movie Clockwise, written by Michael Frayn and starring John Cleese. The title is in pink near the bottom, with "Monty Python's John Cleese In" above and usual movie credits text beneath it, all over a blue-and-white fluffy clouds kind of a background which is pale at the bottom (where the title and credits are dark text over it) fading to dark at the top, where the strapline is in white: "Mr Stimpson ran his life and everyone else's by the clock. Then one day at 2:09 and 43 seconds... The clock decided to strike back." The centre of the image is John Cleese, dishevelled in a torn suit with his trousers rucked exposing his bare ankles and lower calves. He is wedged between two giant clockfaces: a fairly classical "school clock" kind of a style with black text and hands on white faces with fat rims that look brass but are probably painted plastic. The one on the left is at around 1.24; the one on the right at 9.43.

James Aylett@james· Nov 28

San Francisco has a new independent bookstore (disclaimer: run by friends) in Union Square bestbookstore.com

Photo of a bookstore window, taken on an angle like I'm pretending to be cool or something. The store name is in blue, yellow and pink neon style lights: theBestBookstore. Beneath it are display shelves of books, hard to make out because of the reflection in the window of the shops opposite.

James Aylett@james· Nov 28

If you see this, I IMPLORE you to post a picture from whatever device you are using without explanation.

It's a lot of bones. On the right are three skulls, sans jawbone, on a pale background. The ground gets slightly darker to the left where there's just a big pile of bones. Skulls and thigh bones, piled on each other. Someone made this their place. Someone had fun.

James Aylett@james· Nov 14

And creates opportunities for low key hilarious details in Wikipedia entries: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute... has a helpful photo of a suit of armour that you wouldn't be allowed to wear. In case you were confused.

A photo of a suit of armour, captioned "A suit of armour, not allowed in Parliament". The armour is silver coloured, I'm not an armour specialist but it looks like solid chunks of metal so I'm guessing that's plate armour? It's full body, everything covered in metal. It stands jauntily on a short square black plinth against a white background. Something about the photo makes it look like a tiny model, but Wikipedia says this is 169cm tall (possibly including the plinth) and was made in Milan so less likely to have been worn in the UK much anyway.

James Aylett@james· Nov 6

This is the world that we created: the dull screen of death on a railway station vending machine

A digital screen showing the message 'support.google.com is blocked' with a note that "your organisation doesn't allow you to view this site". The text is black on white, with an information icon (the letter 'i' in a circle) above.

Reflected in the screen are some ceiling lights in white and yellow, making it clear this is in at least a communal if not a public space.

James Aylett@james· Nov 4

Oh joy, having to figure out which of the two Apple accounts I ended up with when trying to change my email address that time to log in to in order to opt out of something dumb that I don't want done to my podcast. Also this, which is probably because Apple forgot about the British English l10n:

A configuration setting in Apple Podcast Connect, for a feature called "Timed Links" which is in beta. It doesn't matter what timed links are, which is described in the screenshot (but cut off because that's not the bit that's annoying); what matters is that the checkbox which controls this feature isn't labelled something useful like "Enable Timed Links for this podcast", but "PCC.Show.Availability.MediaLinks.CheckboxMessage".

James Aylett@james· Oct 18

I don't believe anyone would mean that in 2025 and get it wrong, particularly as the domain I actually used was of a remailer.

An email confirmation box asking if I meant the same email but at hotmail.com, a domain I haven't thought of in more than a decade. It has a cherry yellow theme visible as a stripe down the left edge and in the colour of the 'yes' button while 'no' and the rest of the text is black on white

James Aylett@james· Oct 6

Particularly weak that they say the problem is "specifically" ... either one thing or another. Couldn't say which. Just one of them. That they're totally different and one of them is undefined is irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. Not a flag of convenience to wrap our selves in, shivering.

specifically promoting hateful content or being disruptive to other users. We take these guidelines seriously to ensure a safe and respectulf environment for all our users.

James Aylett@james· Sep 26

Three little Dinos had roast beef

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with three Dinos in the sand. The angle is low so we can't see the mouths of the front two, a Stegosaurus looking Dino and a Triceratops like one (we don't like to pry). Behind them is a brachiosaur of some description, whose elevated head we can see over the stegosaur but not its mouth which is obscured. Behind all of them, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies.

James Aylett@james· Sep 25

Two together may quarrel

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with two Dinos who seem to be fighting, their heads butted up against each other. The one on the right is smaller and is being pushed from underneath by the larger one who either did rugby or wrestling as a Dinolette. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies.

James Aylett@james· Sep 24

No I absolutely will not, but thanks for reminding me I'm still on your stupid mailing list.

A screenshot from a WashPo promotional email, in black text on a white background, for their automated lying machine. The headline is "Built on facts. Powered by conversation." Then there's a single paragraph:

Ask The Post AI is fueled by trusted reporting and your curiosity. Where will your next question take you?

And finally the call to action button, which is white on blue: "Start your conversation"

James Aylett@james· Sep 24

Umm.

A concertina interface for FAQs showing just the top question: "How will the two days works?"

James Aylett@james· Sep 24

One Dino is lonely