I was a bit surprised by this lesson, partly as it was merged with a lesson on how to SAVE FILES by type. I mean, I can see WHY it’s included there, as GIFs are a format that you need when saving as OR exporting to that format. But the real point isn’t exactly the format save so much as the way it works.
GIFs
I already knew about transparent GIFs, of course, as I have done lots of conversions of existing file formats back and forth, even some cropping in other programs in order to create just a simple outline of an object and then to basically “add” it on top of some other background. I also have some clip art that comes with transparent backgrounds, although some of them are grouped as TRANSPARENT – WHITE and TRANSPARENT – BLACK even though the foregrounds were neither and the backgrounds were transparent / no colour. I never really understood the wording, and naively thought they were suggesting “these colours look better on dark backgrounds or light backgrounds”. Nope, although it is related.
The lesson I was looking at tonight was about adding an outline to an image or text so that, if for example, I’m going to eventually show it on a black background, I save it with a black outline around the image. I’ve never done that before, I thought it was better to save with NO outline, then nothing would show, and I could show it on ANY background. Which can be done of course. Except that if I have, say, a small graphic of a dog, and the dog is yellow, then when I put it on a black background, the image will show a transition from (a) a yellow image to (b) a black background. In a sense, it seems almost like that’s a double transition or more accurately, a double strength transition at exactly the same point. If on the other hand, I put a black background around the dog, the transition is more gradual:
a. Yellow dog transitions to black outline colour within the same image; b. Black outline transitions to black background image.
A two-step transition that takes place at two different points. I had noticed a few times that the transition from “no-border” to background was a bit fuzzy at the edges, didn’t seem quite seamless, so the lesson here is to decide what background it will have and make THAT the border colour too, rather than assuming I’ll decide the background colour later. It was a very tiny “ah-hah!” moment, but a moment nevertheless. It basically makes the image blend more seamlessly with the background. And I’ll need to remember that part of it is that with a outside border, it’s easier for the software to give it harder/more defined lines too.
I could then optimize and flatten the image for the web, and voila!
I know, not exactly life-affirming. The tutorial had me merging layers (although there weren’t any), flattening the image (to look better on the web), and exporting.
Optimizing
I liked however some other tips and tricks it mentioned around optimizing for the size of the file.
GIFs work well for simple colours and graphics;
GIFs are generally better than JPGs for text, which is an interesting thought to remember, as JPGs tend to come out fuzzy (Yes! I’ve noticed that! I thought it was my lousy text rendering!); and,
GIFs are quite small, about 10K for the above image, although an optimized JPEG wouldn’t have been much different, given the type of image — for a photo, a JPEG would be smaller than a GIF.
The tutorial also suggested other ways of optimizing including changing the overall canvas size (IMAGE / CANVAS SIZE), cropping (TOOL choice), or SHARPENING (SELECT / SHARPEN), particularly for photos.
What I learned today
I like finally understanding the purpose of the different coloured outlines, particularly around text, on transparent images. And the optimization tips are not bad, although I’ll have to use them a few times to get my head around it completely.
I mentioned I was going to try to learn GIMP, and I have a large set of tutorials to work through. Saving sounds like a pretty basic element to a photo editor, amiright? Yet the tutorial file I have for saving is 19 pages long. Wait, what?
Oh, riiiiight. It isn’t about simply saving. It’s about saving in the right formats and size optimization for different uses (websites, emails, graphic buttons, etc.). Okay, that makes more sense. 🙂 For now, I’ll stick to the basics and worry about optimization next time.
SAVE vs. SAVE AS
The first big “hint” is the importance of using SAVE AS rather than SAVE so that you don’t mess up your original picture. Instead, you can have multiple incremental versions as you go in case you need to go back (GRADUATION becomes GRADUATION-COPY, for example, or GRADUATION-ORIGINAL vs. GRADUATION-COPY 1, 2, 3). It keeps the original safe. This is a big issue with smaller editor programs that frequently save right back over the original without even a warning in some applications. You mean you DIDN’T want to erase that one and only copy of your wife, son and mother on her last birthday before she passed? Oops, sorry about that.
While it CAN be devastating to the uninitiated, I’m not sure that’s as big an issue for me. I’m more anal retentive and I tend to keep originals in a separate folder and copy everything I’m working on somewhere else. That way if I need to blow everything off and start fresh, I can simply delete a folder of working files and grab another copy of the originals. The only downside for me is to remember to save incremental versions at key steps. I’ve done previous editing of astro photos where I did a whole bunch of edits and then saved, before I realized that I liked steps 1-3 in the way that I did them, but maybe step 4 should have had a slightly different tweak to the settings before I did step 5, 6, and 7. If I saved sequential versions of the file (rather than just continuing to save over even my working copy), I could just delete everything after step 3 and jump back into my process. In an editor like GIMP, some of that is avoided as many “tweaks” or “changes” are actually done in layers. If you don’t like what you did on layer 3, fix it, and then go back to layer 7.
I confess I’m not a giant fan of GIMP’s interface for saving. My preference is almost always to simply give me the Windows File Explorer-type interface rather than something “unique”, but GIMP’s is a bit closer to other graphical interfaces that want to give you certain types of folders first to help you stick to a better photo-processing process and avoid glitches. However, in doing so, it makes it harder to just easily browse amongst your traditional folders. They do have a “recently used” option though, and that works well enough most of the time.
SAVE vs. EXPORT
Another part that doesn’t really excite me is that like many of the editors out there, GIMP assumes that when you are “saving” the file, you want to save it as a project file and, well, ONLY a project file. If you’re doing something really simple like cropping, you may not even need to save the project file, you can just make the edits and save it as a PICTURE.
However, the point of using an editor like GIMP is the power to do more complex stuff, and this is often accomplished using layers. In a project file, you might have three different “layers” in the image — a background layer, some image, and perhaps some text over top. When you SAVE it as a project file, it saves the file with all three layers kept separate within the file so if you want to edit later, you can just open it up, select a layer, and edit away (such as changing the text). If you save in JPEG, which doesn’t handle layers i.e., it is all just “one layer”, then when you open it up, you can’t edit a piece and regenerate, it’s already all merged. Put differently, the “picture” that was behind the text is GONE from the image, just the text shows up…the background overwritten by the image is also GONE from the file. If you went in and edited one piece, it would be like moving a jigsaw puzzle piece, there would be a gap after you moved it.
In other words, the layers in a project file are used to GENERATE an image, rather than being the actual image itself. Sort of like a recipe card for all the pieces you have, and if you tell it to MAKE A PICTURE, so to speak, it will. This makes sense, that’s the point of using a graphics editor with the power of GIMP or PhotoShop rather than something simplistic.
Yet you may not always want to save in project format. In any other application, say WORD, sure, you want to save in WORD format 95% of the time. But if you want to switch to saving a PDF, you just do a normal SAVE AS, change the file format, and bob’s your uncle, one new file format handled.
More sophisticated graphic editors want you to clearly understand these are really two totally different functions, not just one with a slightly different file format. So they separate PROJECT saving from IMAGE saving. As such, project files use SAVE / SAVE AS; image files require you to use EXPORT.
I find it interesting that the tutorial I have seems to suggest that SAVE AS will let me do both SAVE or EXPORT with a single interface, and that if I choose something that doesn’t support layers, it will prompt me to EXPORT instead of SAVE. I’m using a newer version of GIMP than the tutorial did, and that is NOT what is shown on my screen, they are clearly separate now. Too bad, as I’d prefer that flex. However, as I said, it IS a developer philosophy question, there’s no perfect right answer, and separating them DOES ensure you won’t lose all your work saving it in the wrong format. If you save it as the default project file, you can always generate the graphic file later; if you accidentally saved it as a graphic file, you couldn’t easily recreate the project file from it.
GIMP uses XCF as its default extension for a GIMP project file aka the photo you’re working on, although I’ll have to look to see if there are other project formats to save to, perhaps ones that would import better into other editors (like PhotoShop). That might be more of a script plugin, I don’t see it by default. It won’t matter much for me, other than in the opposite direction. There are some examples out there where people tell you how to accomplish something in PHOTOSHOP for example and provide a sample file to work with, but I might want to try to import it into GIMP instead. It’s unlikely I’ll go in the opposite direction since I don’t have PhotoShop and I’m unwilling to pay their subscription model.
Which is why I’m using GIMP in the first place. 🙂
What I learned today
I learned how to work GIMP’s file manager interface and to differentiate between SAVE for project files and EXPORT for all the graphical/image formats. Being able to process regular and astro photos seems a very long way away.
As some of you know, I’m into astronomy. Although if you base it on how often I have gone out in the last two years, it seems like I’m an equipment hoarder more than an amateur astronomer.
And built within some of that work is a light interest in astrophotography with my smartphone at the scope more so than using a full WebCam or DSLR. I’m willing to play with both to get them to work, mostly to understand it all, but I want “less equipment” not more, and some of the hard-core astrophotographers have scopes, mounts, tripods, cameras, eyepieces, filters, tables, chairs, laptops, cables out the wazoo, power cords, storage devices, shields so the light from the laptops don’t bother other astronomers, etc. etc. etc.
But even with Smartphone Astrophotography, you do still need some options to process your images. Lots of stuff happens with video converters or stacking software, that’s a whole stage in and of itself, but once you get to the “image”, you frequently need to manipulate it. The people with deep pockets or someone else paying use PhotoShop. Some buy PixInsight, I splurged on a copy of Nebulosity at one point. Many of the processing programs are free.
Yet if you are looking for a photo editor that is pretty powerful, you’ll likely be a bit surprised to find that there is one that is totally free.
Enter the GNU Image Manipulation Program – GIMP
So, yes, GIMP is free. Ignore the Linux naming convention, it works on almost any platform imaginable, including Windows, and it has power that some feel rivals even Photoshop at times. All the great things for image manipulation AND it has abilities to do layers, so what’s not to love?
Well, the part that is not to love is that it is NOT the most wide-used program on the market and while there may be 1000s of training videos out there on how to do anything and everything in PhotoShop, so much so that Photoshop crossed over into being a verb long ago, GIMP is not as popular. I have found a few free books out there, some basic tutorials, the original tutorials that go with the software, and some tips and tricks here and there.
But I know it can do AP work — one of our local astronomy club experts teaches a course on image processing, and because it is free, last time he showed everyone how to do it in GIMP. Sweet. And, I’m not just interested for AP, I do take regular photos too that I want to occasionally tweak. I have a couple of photos that I’ve accumulated in the last 10 years where it’s a great photo, if say the shirt didn’t have a big stain on it. Lots of people know how to use image editors to remove that type of error. GIMP, for example, will do that too.
I just have to find a way to learn it. Enter an online producer of GIMP tutorials.
God Save The Queen
A British woman apparently has taught courses in using GIMP to regular photographers, and since I need to know how to use GIMP generally before I dig into the lessons/approaches for astrophotography, she seemed like a good starting point. For $18 Canadian, or 10 pounds UK, I downloaded her complete set of GIMP tutorials. More than 250 of them, in fact. They are all about 9-15 pages each in PDF format, along with a raw photo to work on, and to work through the technique. Once downloaded, they aren’t necessarily set in a specific “course” order, they are in the order from her training courses…it seems like when she needed to show X or Y, she created a new handout for it, and they are sequentially numbered by her need, not by a learning order.
She has them classified into 5 different levels, so I spent some time tonight sorting them after extracting them from three ZIP files. I’ll probably need to sort them even further at some point, but for now, it’s a start.
Beginners: Ten tutorials in total, with three dealing with optimizing and saving images, colour models, and inverting colours, each of which sounds easy enough. There’s also one for a Cubism Filter and another for a Posterised Distressed Image. Yeah, I have no clue about those. I found five hiding in a sub-folder, so there are also ones about launching GIMP, patterns (2), understanding resolution, and even the rule of thirds.
Beginners Plus: Well that escalated quickly — there are 116! Adding borders, applying filters, playing with colours, distorting images, etc. The filters will likely be VERY similar across the board, although with different tips for each one about how / when to use it I suppose.
Intermediate: There are eighty-four at this level, with some cloning, cutting, custom brushes, a bit of blending or colour adjustments, and then a huge number of tutorials about different types of text patterns that you can do.
Intermediate Plus: There are forty-six of these ones, and most of them seem like “PhotoShop” as a verb — adding things, tweaking granular items like textures and blemishes or red eyes, etc. A bit more “creativity” is added as opposed to simply processing what was already there. I know, I’m a purist, and so while many people might not blink twice about adding falling snow to a winterscape, I would hesitate as it would never be real to me after that — if it wasn’t snowing when I took a photo, I’m not looking to “invent” artifacts to add.
Advanced: The final level only has eight tutorials, and I’m not sure I would classify them as advanced so much as specialized effects. There are some animated options for example, and even how to take a large photo to frame it as a triptych for printing and hanging. And one for creating a graduated navigation button which isn’t something I need on my website.
I am not totally sure this is the best way to learn GIMP, but it appears to at least be a viable way. So I’m going with it. We’ll see what I learn as I go…
I am part of what I call the PolyWogg Reading Challenge, a year-long “book club” with low intensity, lots of variety, and monthly themes. It’s nothing big, a small group of friends/family and myself, with me acting as ringleader. Part of the goal was to encourage me to read more and to have small discussions with others without being overwhelmed by the firehose approach of sites like GoodReads.
Most of the time, I read for simple pleasure. Many of my choices are murder mysteries — detectives, lawyers, detectives and lawyers, amateur sleuths, coroners, consulting detectives, etc. Way back in the ’90s, I followed an online discussion group and they had a list of rules for participation, one of which said that members were not allowed to discuss Anne Perry’s backstory. I didn’t even know who Anne Perry was, but she was the only author whose “history” was essentially verboten. I learned from others that she wrote historical fiction, and I didn’t know much about what that entailed. The closest I came was Sherlock Holmes, Murder in the Rue Morgue or Agatha Christie. Not “historical” in any sense other than it was previously contemporary fiction but written at the dawn of mystery writing.
I sought out some Anne Perry books to try one, and I tried a series with Charlotte and Thomas Pitt. Basic premise is 1860s England, Charlotte is not the typical society woman / lady, will never get married because no man is likely to take her opinionated self, etc. Thomas is a detective who befriends her. Joint sleuthing leads to affection to love to marriage, etc. I enjoyed the series and some of the sense of time and place. I bought a few in the series, but didn’t advance too far just by time and interest. In case you are wondering, the reason the author’s backstory was banned from discussion was that as a teen, her and her friend committed a murder, knocked down to manslaughter, and both were found guilty. Soooo, lots of people have views about reading a murder mystery written by someone who killed someone in real life. Most of the time you see current concerns more like cancel culture; this was way before that and discussions erupted with strong reaction on both sides until the moderators finally said, “Knock it off, no more discussion of her life, we’re here to discuss books.” Personally, it meant little to me, I just liked the books.
What did I say about resonance?
One of our past months had the theme of “history” and the goal was to read a book that was set or written before 1965. I included Anne Perry as one of the formal “challenge” authors, and I dusted off some of the old copies. One of the other series is a character named William Monk and most sites list the books as the “Monk” series. There’s something ironic about the fact that the other series lists both the husband and wife as the series name, but this series is marketed as the William Monk series yet has two other characters, Hester Latterly (a former Crimean nurse) and Oliver Rathbone (a solicitor & barrister). Hester figures prominently in the series, as does Oliver in many of them, and deals extensively with the role of women as a plot device, yet ironically it is the “Monk” character that gets sole billing as the protagonist.
In the first book, one of the most interesting aspects of William Monk was that he had had an accident and is suffering from some degree of amnesia. He didn’t remember his name, nor remember any part of his past, yet he was still functionally able to converse, talk, understand, etc. None of his functional abilities are impaired in any way, he just didn’t know who he was.
A police captain comes to see him, he finds out his own name, and he is scared that if someone finds out he is an amnesiac, he’ll be fired. And have no money on which to live. So he fakes it until he makes it.
I remember when I first read it, I was intrigued by the idea of nature vs. nurture. As Monk detects, he also starts to see how others react to him and he gets a picture of himself as a relatively harsh person. Regularly cutting, frequently ruthless in his dealings with others if he feels they don’t measure up to his professional standards, intolerant, aggressive, abrasive, and virtually no friends. He lived for the job, and while he was well respected by everyone for his abilities, it seems like no one likes him very much. He’s an ass regularly, just brilliant at his job. But it rubs him raw. His “new” self doesn’t much like his “old” self.
In short, without all the layers of nurture/experience from his life, he has been reset to a bunch of core values of duty and honour, and even justice above both of those. The inherent “nature”, perhaps. In the novels, much of the mystery of his past is contrived. For example, he remembers he has a sister who lives in the country and he goes to see her. She’s warm to his arrival, but it’s clear he hasn’t stayed in touch much, nor reciprocated her feelings. There’s no animosity, they’re just not very close. He has a thousand questions, and he tells her nothing. Rather than simply say, “So a funny thing happened when I got knocked on the head, I don’t remember any of you or mom+dad, do you think you could fill in the blanks?”, he remains silent. It may work as a primary plot device in a lot of TV shows, but as a literary device, it’s a bit shallow. At least in a TV show, you wouldn’t be privy to all his thoughts at the time. And in many situations, he prides himself on showing courage and just asking something, facing his fear, but when it is his sister and the safest space he knows, he says nothing. Yawn.
But some of the books have been fascinating to see different aspects crop up. In one book, he remembers a woman that he cared about deeply, but not the context. He investigates, narrows it down to three possible cases, and goes to visit them. In all three, the people involved in the old case react to his arrival in both shock and awe, more signs of his ruthlessness and brilliance. But when he finally meets the woman, she reacts very harshly to his arrival. It’s a bit convoluted, but essentially they did both love each other, but she decided he was too much of a drama queen with the lows of feeling injustice for others and the highs of success in thwarting them; she preferred a more even keel, and chose a nice, quiet, safe life over being around his potential ruthlessness and passions, even if not directed at her. When they parted, they agreed that he would never return, yet here he is, so she ain’t happy. He’s devastated by the truth of the memory and also that he allowed himself to misjudge her. He’s not as upset about her, as he is about himself.
It’s a tough nuance, but that idea resonates with me. Revisiting old behaviour, reinterpreting how that behaviour played out, even your own motives for why you behaved that way. I find the idea compelling. Not to judge OTHERS or reinterpret their behaviour and ascribe motives that weren’t present at the time, but in analysing my own motives to find any hidden truths. While I didn’t get conked on the head, I have spent a lot of time in my life looking back at previous behaviour, analysing it, examining my motives, and not always liking what I found. There’s also an element in there of the “road not taken”, not in the sense of wondering “what if”, but more of the idea that a thousand little decisions affect the way your life unfolds. Simple decisions like choosing to sit in the second row of a lecture hall and meeting someone who if you had sat in the third row, you wouldn’t have. And perhaps they introduced you to someone else who introduced you to someone else who introduced you to your spouse. A domino effect that started simply because you sat in one row rather than another. In Monk’s case, he comes face to face with the one who got away and while he gets closure, it comes at a heavy price.
Sustainable employment income
Because the books take place in the 1850s/60s in England, of course there is very little evidence of a welfare state. The difference between classes is almost a sub-character of its own in both series, and one overwhelming theme is “what money will I live on?”. For Hester, the nurse, she does not want to rely on her brother to look after her, so she works as a nurse in various homes for those in higher society (i.e. those with money to pay her). It puts her a bit above servant, but not much. Yet she has to work because she needs money to live on. The books don’t dwell too much on whether she has any savings or if she’s literally living one paycheque away from disaster, but it’s not a soft cushion, if she has one. In that regard, it is something commented upon for most of the female characters.
But Monk himself is not too far off that point. He is terrified in the first book that he will lose his job, have no income after 2 weeks, and might end up in a workhouse which almost nobody ever leaves. I went to university, even law school for awhile, and I’ve worked for the government in a good job for the last 28 years. Yet I can remember wondering when I was in high school what would become of me.
Would I find something I liked? I sucked at pretty much anything manual, but had no real idea of what other types of jobs were out there. I never really saw any jobs where I thought, “I could do that. I could make a living at THAT.” When I was in university and working at the library, I loved it. Some of that was the nature of the job, and I’ve blogged about some of that previously, but some of it was straight cause and effect — I worked and I got paid. And they liked my work enough to keep hiring me. I was GOOD at something. So, for awhile, I thought, “Hmm…I like books, I like working in the library, maybe I could become a librarian.” Or one of the back office staff.
I *saw* jobs that would generate income and that I could foreseeably do. I had, in short, options. But I remember all too well when I didn’t think I had any options. I didn’t know if I could/would go to college or university. It seemed so expensive to me, it was not a “guaranteed” option for me. But I got a summer job at the library. I earned real money for a change, not the previous temp stuff I had done for pocket change. I started at a minimum wage of about $8.50 an hour or so, but within a few years, I was above $12, and I thought I was amazing.
More importantly, I was starting to see other jobs I could possibly do. A step above my station, as it were. It wasn’t until I went to work for the Ministry of Education in B.C. for a co-op that I saw what government really was like and saw TONS of jobs I could do. A myriad of options.
Yet when I look back, and partly because of the nature of my job now that focuses heavily on the labour force and what “skills” people need to have for various sectors, I wonder if there are students like me who are in high school with no pathway in front of them that they can see. Not because they have no pathway, or that their options are too limited, just that no one has said, “Hey, do you see this path over here? Or over here? Or over here?”. For some people, that was what guidance counsellors were for, except most guidance counsellors had no real training or special information about jobs. The internet has helped with finding information, but if you don’t know what to look for in the first place, how do you know where to start looking?
For many people, they’ll do a career quiz. If I pretend I’m a high-school student, and looking at potential careers, there are a lot of career quizzes out there. Many ask you questions you have no idea what the answer is…would you rather be an auditor or a politician? Umm, neither? Both? As a high school student, you may have no clue what a production manager does, or if it says “salesperson”, do they mean a telemarketer, a retailer, or someone who works for a company selling company products to other businesses?
For fun, I did one quiz, and I tried to answer as if it was me 35+ years ago. It came back with 30 suggestions…financial played heavily with accountant, auditor, actuary, bookkeeper, financial aid officer, financial analyst, foreign exchange trader, business valuator, and financial planner. That’s not a bad list, to be honest, although trader wouldn’t be anything I would like. But 18yo me wouldn’t have known that. It would have given me a starting point, I suppose. But I was already taking accounting in high school, and liked it enough to win a small local accounting contest, so that was already on the possible list. Court reporter showed up, as did a corporate lawyer but not a general lawyer (partly as I said I didn’t want to convince people in adversarial arguments, probably).
Weirdly, some health care stuff shows up…Health care administrator, hospital administrator, research tech? Sure. But dental lab technician or geneticist? Huh?
Other odd ones include surveyor (?), economist (yes, but back then I would have had no idea what that meant), food service manager (okay, a little specific), office manager (generic), IT manager (okay), systems administrator (hmmm), systems analyst (okay, but would have no idea what that was), venture capitalist (umm, I think I would need some capital first), small business owner (never), quality assurance engineer (maybe), and consultant (pretty generic).
The weirdest two go to opposite ends of the spectrum. The REALLY weird “hard pass” was sommelier. That is just plain laughable. Not only do I not like or appreciate wine, I have no discerning palate or nose for it either.
But the one that struck me as really odd, a hard yes of sorts, was not something that showed up ANYWHERE in the questions…astronomer. Unless the quiz pulled my browser history, that seems like a really weird coincidence.
Yet the problem with all of it is that nowhere in that list is “government employee”. Economist, perhaps, although when you click their link to see what they mean, they generally mean at a large banking institution. It’s just natural, most HR advice out there is geared towards the private sector, not based on an equally detailed knowledge of the public sector.
But I digress
As I read the books, and the various options available to women, it seems generally like it would collapse down to a much smaller list:
Get married
Servant or servant+ (professional nurse, not a general nurse)
Shopkeepers, general rabble
Prostitute
Corpse
Sure, I know it’s historical fiction, not a documentary, but I find some resonance in wondering “What do I do?”. We of course have a safety net, but it doesn’t stop people from asking themselves a fundamental question…not “What do I do or even want to do?”, but the simpler question, “what CAN I do?”
Some of that despair permeates through, and combined with the question of “Who are we if we are not surrounded by our decisions, if we were to break free and start fresh tomorrow?”, I find some of the thoughts consuming.
It’s strange to me that those ideas should resonate with me so much.
Over the last few years, I have been increasingly active in a few active fora online. In particular, multiple ones related to amateur astronomy and a couple related to WordPress. My participation is generally two-fold — I both learn from others and help newbies with their questions. I’ve also been active in the past in groups related to my son’s health issues, although those are often more sharing of experiences than directly helping anyone.
One thing that I am particularly good at is framing information in a way that a newbie can understand it, orient themselves to the topic, and then proceed with a rudimentary schema for processing various types of other information coming their way.
Yet what I am often struck by, and amazed at, is the completely useless advice provided by well-meaning people in the fora. I don’t mean that the information is wrong, although that happens too. I mean people who ask a question, and then when someone responds, the response is of the form “Do x.”
At first blush, that sounds helpful, doesn’t it? They asked what they should do, and somebody answered. Except they didn’t ask any questions to understand the context for the question. They didn’t say to the newbie, “Wait, what are you trying to do first? What are you looking for?”.
In astronomy circles, there is a very common opening salvo by newbies. “Hi, I’m new to the group but I’ve always been interested in astronomy. I have read a bunch of stuff online, but I’m just more confused. I want to buy a scope, and I don’t know which ones are good for newbies. Please advise.”
And invariably, within about 3 replies, someone says, “Buy a Dobsonian” and someone else says “buy binoculars”. Is that wrong advice? Maybe not.
But it’s about the equivalent of someone asking what tool to use to take apart a workbench, and someone saying a saw, another saying a screwdriver, and another saying a hammer. Are they wrong? Not really. But until we know the context of how that workbench was initially assembled, what it’s made of, and what the person intends to do with the materials afterwards, the answers are at best incomplete. As a result, they’re useless.
For astronomy, for example, telling someone to buy a Dobsonian design is about the same as telling someone to buy a sedan when looking for a car. It’s an all-round good choice, good value, a solid utility vehicle. On the other hand, if the person was looking to haul equipment around their farm, not the best of choices. Yet people will tell someone to buy a Dob without ever asking a single question about what the person is looking for, are they comfortable learning to navigate the sky manually, are they looking to get into astrophotography at some point, etc. Equally, binos are a frequent “all-round” suggestion EXCEPT it assumes that the person is able to stand still (i.e., no wobbles, no physical mobility issues) and their eyes work well in conjunction with each other and don’t have any aggressive astigmatisms or wear bifocals. If either of those is not true — i.e. for kids who can’t hold heavy binos still or seniors with different eyesight profiles — then binos might be a terrible suggestion. They are also less useful for certain types of objects (moon, planets) which are quite often VERY popular starter targets. In addition, they require manual navigation of the sky too, which might not be what the person prefers.
In WordPress, people frequently say “Get Elementor” which is a page designer. It is advertised as easy to learn, easy to use, and there is common wisdom out there to regularly say “it’s free and has lots of power”. I have been using WP for close to 10 years, and when I tried Elementor? I found it completely confusing. Plus it mucked with a bunch of my existing setup. It was an overly complicated and terrible design for a newbie who doesn’t even know what WP does or a theme is for, let alone plugins, but the common advice is to start with full page design to start?
I don’t know what it is, whether it is group think, or the dangers of underestimating stupidity in large groups, but frequently I will see people chiming in and leading the person down roads they are likely to follow, get confused, get frustrated, and end their trip before it even begins.
Equally in astronomy, there are certain types of setups that are better for astrophotography than others. While you can do visual and AP with them, they’re often not as versatile or as simple for visual. Different tools for different projects, so to speak. Yet there are people who say “Buy this equatorial mount” which is good for AP more than visual and is priced at 5x the budget the person said they had, or add this gadget, buy this upgrade, get this accessory. It is very popular for some people to randomly suggest upgrades to gear when it is someone else’s money.
Most days it’s merely puzzling. Some days it’s maddening. I’ve sometimes come to a discussion late, 40 people have already taken the person down ten different rabbitholes, I ask two simple Qs, and it turns out NONE of what the guy already went through applies to his situation. But nobody asked what the problem was, they just started throwing out generic solutions.
I feel at times it’s like the old issue of someone typing “FIRST!” when commenting on a post. Stupid and pointless. But then I feel more angry later…because in a couple of cases, the answers were SO wrong, that the person felt like they had NO choice but to give up the hobby. Because they had a budget for astronomy, for example, of $200, and some moron told them they needed to spend at least $1500 or it wasn’t even worth it to get started.
I confess that more and more, this kind of misleading “advice” just pisses me off. The person has no way of knowing the advisor is well-meaning but stupid. I’ve seen it with people trying to understand French training, HR prep for exams and interviews, or writing fiction too.
Maybe I’m cranky, but I feel like if you don’t have something actually useful to contribute, then don’t bother saying anything at all. 🙂 Others are more of the “you get what you pay for” variety. Either way, I am starting to believe in the “superficiality of the crowd” more than in their wisdom.
