Friday, October 18, 2013

Facebook WILL Put Porn In Your Newsfeed

Facebook offers several options to customize what you see in your newsfeed. However, sometimes Facebook ignores those settings. Facebook decides that, in spite of your settings, you really need to see something. And sometimes, that something is pornographic.

First, let's review what you can configure: There are several ways to view your newsfeed. The default is "News Feed", in which Facebook decides what content is likely to be most important to you among everything your friends post. In my opinion, no algorithm can ever properly understand what I think is important, and so I use the "Most Recent" option.

This still isn't acceptable for me, which leads us to the next way to configure the newsfeed. Move your mouse cursor over a friend's name. You should see a popup giving some information about that person. Next, click on "Friends", then on "Settings". This should give you a menu showing what postings you see from that friend. That should look something like:


For me, I don't want to miss anything from my friends, and so I choose "All Updates". However, to keep some semblance of  order to my feed, I've deselected certain options. For almost all of my Facebook friends, I've deselected "Life Events", "Games", "Comments and Likes", and "Other Activity". It took me a couple of hours to do this for all of my friends, but I consider it well worthwhile. It makes Facebook a useful tool, whereas before, my newsfeed was a cacophony of useless drivel. With these options deselected, my feed shows me just what I want to see.

However, there's a defect in Facebook's software. Or perhaps it's a conscious design feature. On a regular basis, two or three times a day, I see a comment or like in my newsfeed, contrary to my explicit choice in settings. I've even reported this defect a number of times to Facebook, to no avail. And I know others have too.

Now to the title of this rant. Here's something that appeared in my newsfeed a couple of days ago. One of my friends commented on some page, and that fact appeared in my newsfeed contrary to my settings. Here's what showed up:


Now then, I'm not criticizing the fact that my friend commented on this particular posting. He certainly has that right. And I'm not objecting to the page he posted too either. However, Facebook's algorithm's somehow decided that I should be interested in his comment regardless of my explicit settings. This is extremely annoying, and unacceptable. I went through a lot of trouble configuring Facebook so I won't have to be subjected to this kind of content in my newsfeed.

To summarize, Facebook will, due either to some software defect or explicit design, put content in your newsfeed contrary to your explicit settings. As a consequence, if one of your Facebook friends posts on a page that's offensive to you, you will occasionally be subjected to that posting regardless of your settings. That offensive content may well be pornographic, or of a violent nature, or espousing some contrary political or religious viewpoint. Whatever the reason, you will see content you don't want to see in your newsfeed.

And worse, this may well apply to what your children see too. I know some parents who let their children under 13 sign up to Facebook, contrary to Facebook's rules.

If you're concerned, let others know. And let Facebook know that you're concerned too.

Cheers! Hans 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Ukulele Chord Diagrams

After I started playing ukulele, I realized that I needed a way to create my own song arrangements. There are numerous web sites that offer chord arrangements for songs, many specifically geared to ukulele. We all know that Dr Uke 's Songs and Richard G's Songbook are great sources of ukulele arrangements. And of course, Chordie.com has everything.

But I'm not always satisfied, especially with Chordie. Chordie often provides a good starting point, but I always want to do things differently. There are always multiple ways to finger every chord, and often, there's a better sounding alternative to the standard open fingering used in most song arrangements. Here's an example of the three main chords in the key of D, using my favorite alternative form of A7:

To prepare your own chord arrangements for your favorite songs, you need a couple of things. First, a good word processor. LibreOffice Writer is my choice since it has full-fledged desktop publishing features. It also runs on a variety of different operating systems.

Second, you need a source of graphics for the chord diagrams. One way to do that is to download the chord graphics from a site like Chordie.com. But finding all the diagrams you need can be tedious. If you're technically oriented, you can figure out a way to download them all, but then you'd have a torrent of files to sort through. And you still won't get diagrams for alternatives, such as the 0454 A7 (pictured above).

And so, I created my own chord diagrams, which you can download from my Ukulele Chord Box Collection. There are six collections to choose from, with chords geared to standard GCEA tuning, ADF#B tuning, and standard baritone tuning. In addition, there are left-handed variations for them all. The diagrams come in two sizes: 48x64 pixels and 36x54 pixels.

I've made these available under a Creative Commons License, so you can do what you want with them. If you find these chord diagrams useful and want to show your appreciation, there's a Paypal link on the download page where you can donate $10. I certainly won't get rich from these donations, but $10 will pay for a couple of beers at the Royal Tavern, where we hold our monthly ukulele jam in Kingston.

Using LibreOffice Writer, I usually include the chord names within parentheses within the song lyrics, and highlight the chord names in red. I then put the chord diagrams at the bottom of the page. If there's no room at the bottom, I add a frame to the side, and put the chord diagrams there. With a folder view of the chord diagrams open, I drag and drop the image into the document. With a right mouse click on the image, I choose "Anchor", and then select "As character". I then cut and paste to position the diagram where I want.

Cheers! Hans