airdrop — one of those features that, when it works is like magic, but when it doesn’t is utterly infuritating.
i love that. i feel like there is also something to be said for when airdrop, or language doesn’t work and how that is dealt with. i realized that apple designs airdrop to just “work,” so when it doesnt’t, they never thought to design for that state. funnily, when language doesn’t work, i suppose there are a myriad of fallbacks that we can resort to, such as pointing. what would airdrop look like if you could only point? very blobby indeed.
i made the blob a while back — i wanted to mask an image and drew the mask, scanned it, and then traced it to an SVG. the blob is the source image, and i converted it to base64 so i could include it in this page.
an airdrop game would be so fun! it is also interesting to imagine that it is perhaps the easiest interface for two devices to send files to one another. i remember how i would have to use a usb stick otherwise.
here is a simple game, perhaps…
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i was telling elliot the same thing — it feels like programming on hard mode without a phone! i am tethering, but it is like a drop of data here and there. i’ve base64 encoded images before, and you can do the same with fonts. you run it through something that will take a file and base64 encode something like this:
openssl base64 < /Users/eric/Downloads/image.jpg | tr -d '\n'
and then, you have to tell the browser that the data is infact base64 encoded, and not a url…
< img src="data:image/jpeg;charset=utf-8;base64,[encoded image here]" >
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wow — that is so amazing. i was just talking to someone yesterday about coding boot camps, and this is flyer is so un-bootcamp like. i never really considered this, but it is kind of funny that bootcamps teaching a “raw” skill still require quite a slick tech-y site to convince people of their legitimacy. perhaps getting back at the idea of html energy, and projects like fruitful school..
i was ruminating on that outdoor coding discussion too. it definitely reminds me of how architects design for a certain environment too, and how more raw buildings are meant to give way to their natural surroundings. that feels similar to keeping a website more black and white so as to let the natural environment envelop it. perhaps to capture that, we need to start including an image in the source code of where the code was written. perhaps in ascii art?
a sensory documentation of the space that surrounds us! dexter’s ascii documentation reminds me also of crypto art, which is generated on ssh’ing into a device. i believe the term is actually ‘randomart’, which looks a bit like this:
+--[ED25519 256]--+ | .+*E.. | | . o+B+..| | + . *.*.o| | o + o + *.+o| | . * S + . o =| | . @ . +.| | O o .| | o.+.. | | .+o | +----[SHA256]-----+
now that i say ‘crypto art’, i realize that this conversation has veered towards NFTs. but this randomart is most decidedly not that type of art, but rather cryptographically generated art. it was devised as a way for users to verify the identity of a server visually.
it feels like there is some relationship between identity and space that i can’t quite put my finger on...
i also had the thought that certain parts of a website reveal itself based on your location — perhaps based on where parts of it was coded? that might allow you to share a sense of being with the creator of the site.
in thinking about this conversation — there are many pieces of it that exist because of how airdrop works. the fact that there are new index.html files created (we are currently on index9.html) each time one of us speaks, and that we are base64 encoding data into this page, all speak to the technological constraints of airdrop.
as this conversation continues, i was also wondering… how does it end? i like the idea you had that one might experience the organic growth of the conversation by navigating through each new index page as we might have.
Wow, I love the idea that certain parts of the site appear for people who physically go to the places we had this conversation...
June 27, 2022 — Nellie's Lawn in Prospect Park 🌳
June 28, 2022 — Ground Support Café ☕️ (wifi)
Maybe we can say anytime you and I are in the same physical location and able to AirDrop, the conversation can continue.
