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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Archive for the ‘interests’ category
07.08.2022
Ever since we had to reset the counter for Autocade in March, because of a new server and a new version of Mediawiki, it’s been interesting to see which pages are most popular.
The old ranking took into account everything from March 2008 to March 2022. With everything set to zero again, I can now see what’s been most popular in the last few months.
Some of the top 20 were among the top pages before March 2022, but what’s surprising is what’s shot up into the top slots.
Over the course of half a day on Friday GMT, the Toyota Corolla (E210) page found itself as the top page, home page excepting. And the Kia Morning (TA) page shot up out of nowhere recently, too.
I know our page on the Corolla is number one on Mojeek for a search of that model but that can’t be the only reason it’s done so well. I haven’t studied the referrer data. A shame that link: no longer works on search engines.
Corolla fans, thank you for your extra 6,000 page views! It’s helped our overall total, but the viewing rate is still down at 2019 levels thanks to the collapse of the Bing index, and the search engines that it’s taken down with them.
I almost feel I’ve shot myself in the foot for promoting Duck Duck Go so much since 2010! But then I hopefully spared a lot of people from being tracked (as much) by the big G.
Tags: 2022, Autocade, Bing, JY&A Media, Mediawiki, Mojeek, publishing, statistics, Toyota
Posted in cars, interests, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology | No Comments »
05.08.2022
Above: Some French text in Lucire.
Regular Lucire readers will have seen a number of articles run in English and French (and one in Japanese) on our main website. Typographically, the French ones are tricky, since we have to distinguish between non-breaking spaces and non-breaking thin spaces, and as far as I know, there is no code for the latter in HTML. Indeed, even with a non-breaking space, a browser can treat it as it would a regular space.
So what’s our solution? Manually, and laboriously, putting in <NOBR> tags around the words that cannot be broken. It’s not efficient but typographically, it makes the text look right and, unless we’ve missed one, we don’t have the problem of guillemets being left on a line by themselves without a word to attach to.
The language is set to fr in the meta tags.
Among our French colleagues, I have seen some go Anglo with their quotation marks and ignoring the traditional French guillemets. Others omit any thin spaces and, consequently, adopt the English spacing rules with punctuation. For some reason, I just can’t bring ourselves to do it, and maybe there is an easier way that we haven’t heard of. I hope nos lecteurs français appreciate the extra effort.
Tags: 2020s, 2021, 2022, French, JY&A Media, Lucire, programming, publishing, typography
Posted in business, design, interests, internet, media, publishing, technology, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
02.07.2022
Here are July 2022’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Tags: 1960s, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970s, 1971, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1980s, 1986, 1987, 2007, 2010s, 2011, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020s, 2022, actors, actresses, advertisement, advertising, Apple, Audi, Bertone, BL, book, Boris Johnson, British Leyland, car, celebrity, Chrysler, Citroën, design, Elle, Europe, Ferrari, film, Ford, France, Germany, GM, Hachette, humour, ITC, James Bond, Japan, Lamborghini, language, magazine, magazine design, Marcello Gandini, Mastodon, Mazda, McLaren, media, modelling, modernism, newspaper, Opel, Peugeot, Porsche, PSA, publishing, Renault, retro, Roger Moore, science fiction, social media, Spain, supermodel, technology, The Persuaders, Tony Curtis, Toyota, Triumph, TV, Twitter, UK, USA
Posted in cars, culture, design, France, gallery, interests, marketing, media, politics, publishing, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
03.06.2022
Here are June 2022’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Notes
Most of these are self-explanatory, though the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper page with Panos Papadopoulos gets a mention. Panos name-drops me about his autobiography.
Tags: 1960s, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1970s, 1977, 1979, 1980s, 1982, 1985, 1987, 2015, 2022, actress, advertisement, airline, AMC, beauty, book, Brexit, car, celebrity, England, film, Ford, Germany, Göteborg, Göteborgs-Posten, humour, Instagram, James Bond, London, marketing, media, Medinge Group, modelling, modernism, newspaper, Nissan, Panos Papadopoulos, Philips, retro, Robert Brownjohn, Roger Moore, Sean Connery, sexism, Sweden, TV, Twitter, UK, USA
Posted in branding, cars, culture, gallery, humour, interests, internet, marketing, politics, TV, UK, USA | No Comments »
02.05.2022
Here are May 2022’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Tags: 1950s, 1955, 1960s, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1970s, 1971, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980s, 1983, 1986, 2022, actress, advertisement, advertising, Alfa Romeo, Audemars Piguet, Autocar, Bertone, BL, Brazil, British Leyland, Canada, car, celebrity, Envoy, fashion, film, France, Germany, GM, Hollywood, humour, James Bond, language, magazine, marketing, modelling, musician, Netherlands, Opel, Panos Emporio, retro, Roger Moore, Saab, science, Sean Connery, Simca, Sweden, Switzerland, Triumph, Twitter, UK, USA, Vauxhall, watch
Posted in cars, culture, gallery, humour, interests, internet, marketing, Sweden, technology, UK | No Comments »
19.04.2022
On March 19, 2022, Autocade had accumulated 27,647,011 page views. That was the last recorded total, and the new site went live the following day. That means over 10,000 views didn’t get added to that total, but as it’s the last I have (unless the Wayback Machine has one from the 20th ult.), then that’s what I’ll have to use as the new zero point.
The new stats’ set-up on the more modern Mediawikis does not update the numbers live; instead, that happens once a day. Some time overnight it ticked over to 351,079 on the new server.
27,647,011 +351,079 = 27,998,090
Even being very conservative, Autocade will have served its 28 millionth page view by now—though I may update this page tomorrow after I confirm it.
Sorry, for those who hated these statistical posts, the new server hasn’t seen the end of them! OCD is OCD!
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months for 20th million)
October 2020: 21,000,000 (three months for 21st million)
January 2021: 22,000,000 (three months for 22nd million)
April 2021: 23,000,000 (three months for 23rd million)
June 2021: 24,000,000 (two months for 24th million)
August 2021: 25,000,000 (two months for 25th million)
October 2021: 26,000,000 (two months for 26th million)
January 2022: 27,000,000 (three months for 27th million)
April 2022: 28,000,000 (three months for 28th million)
Currently there are 4,551 models on there, with the latest Mercedes-Benz S-Klasse the newest entry.
PS.: And here we are, the following day. Autocade’s new stats’ page shows 361,627.
Tags: 2022, Autocade, JY&A Media, Mediawiki, publishing, server, technology
Posted in cars, interests, internet, media, publishing, technology | No Comments »
15.04.2022
I know Tesla gets a lot of flak on social media. Some by me. But I still remember the plucky firm in the 2000s, Martin Eberhard and his stated commitment to transparency, and Lucire’s recognition of the firm by calling the Tesla Roadster its Car to Be Seen in. And while the Roadster didn’t have the range in real terms, and looked too much like a Lotus Elise for one to charge 911 money, it kicked things all off for Tesla.
When I see a Model 3 on the street, and there are an awful lot of them, I think, ‘At least it isn’t another SUV.’ It may be the car to move the trend on, away from the behemoths. Bring on small frontal areas and slippery shapes, which is where we should have been heading anyway. Unlike most people, especially those who bought SUVs, trucks, UVs and crossovers and actually didn’t need them—thereby becoming the second biggest contributor to carbon emissions in the last decade—I’ve thought petrol was expensive for a long, long time. Even if you have an electrified SUV, you’re still using more energy because of basic science about how air travels over an object.
In 1974, the Volkswagen Golf represented a new era, looking bold and sensible during the fuel crisis. The Tesla Model 3, especially the better-made Chinese imports, feels, trend-wise, like a modern, far more expensive equivalent.
Tags: 2000s, 2004, car, Lotus, Lucire, Porsche, Tesla, trend, Volkswagen
Posted in cars, design, interests, USA | 4 Comments »
08.04.2022
Above: Vivaldi appears for less than a second; each entry then disappears. One of the bugs from last night.
Vivaldi updated last night, and nearly instantly shut down.
Sadly, there’s a bug which shuts the program down the moment you hit a form field (filed with them, and they are working on it), and I found that ZIP archives would not download properly. Getting rid of a Spotify tab somehow got me around the first bug, but I know others have not been so lucky.
In the meantime, I discovered downgrading did not work—Vivaldi wouldn’t even start—while upgrading back to 5.2 didn’t solve that problem. I’d see Vivaldis in the task manager for a second but they’d then vanish.
Removing the sessions from the default folder helped me start the program again, but I lost my tabs; fortunately I was able to restore those, in order to duplicate each and every one on my old browser, Opera GX.
I had duplicated tabs onto other browsers reasonably regularly, and I could have retrieved a fairly recent set from my laptop, but it’s always good to have the latest.
Right now I’m deciding whether to stick with Vivaldi while its techs work on the problems, or return to a stable Opera GX, which I last used as my regular browser briefly in 2020.
The type display is still really good, without my needing to add code to get the browser working with MacType.
However, I like Vivaldi and what they stand for, which is why I stuck with it for so long. According to this blog, I’ve been using it reasonably faithfully since September 2017. And I have become very used to it over any other Chromium-based browser.
Some of you may have noticed that this website is finally on https, years after that became the norm. There was one line in the code that wasn’t pointing at the correct stylesheet when this blog loaded using SSL. That was finally remedied yesterday (I hard-coded the stylesheet link into the header PHP file). I’m no expert on such matters but it’s now loading a certificate I got at Let’s Encrypt, and it seems to be working.
One of the changes in the stylesheet that controls the indents and the paragraph spacing does mean some of the line spacing in earlier posts is now off. This happened on the Lucire website, too, but it was one of those things I had to do to make posts going forward look a bit better.
Tags: 2017, 2022, bugs, Opera, software, technology, Vivaldi, web browser
Posted in design, interests, internet, technology, typography | No Comments »
02.04.2022
Here are April 2022’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1973, 1977, 1980, 1980s, 1983, 2020s, 2021, actress, advertisement, advertising, Buick, car, celebrity, film, GM, Italy, James Bond, Japan, magazine, Mitsubishi, modelling, retro, Sean Connery, Sweden, technology, USA, Volvo
Posted in cars, culture, gallery, interests, publishing, Sweden, technology, USA | No Comments »
10.01.2022
Finally, a happier post. For many years (since 2004), my dear friend Stanley Moss has been publishing his Global Brand Letter, which is not only a wonderful summary of the year (or the last half-year, since he often writes every six months) in branding, but an excellent record of the evolution of culture.
He has finished his latest and, for the first time, he has allowed me to host a copy for you to download and read (below). I commend it to you highly. Keep an eye out for future issues, while past ones can be found on his website at www.diganzi.com.
Tags: 2021, branding, culture, friends, Stanley Moss
Posted in business, China, culture, design, globalization, interests, internet, marketing, media, publishing, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
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