Orange Man has lost his ever loving mind.
What do you want to do? Invade Canada? I bet half of the US would help our lovely neighbors to the north. 🇨🇦
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Welcome to a Sunday morning edition of Saturday Morning Coffee. 😃 My youngest daughter and I went to breakfast — TipTop Restaurant — and did a bit of Christmas shopping yesterday. It’s something we do every year. You might say it’s tradition. 🎅🏼
Todays forecast calls for a little snow. ❄️ I hope it happens.
My coffee is nice and hot. Let’s get started.
Enjoy!
Horror legend Stephen King has written a fair few books over the years. Ever since he burst on the scene with “Carrie” in 1974, he’s given fans at least one book nearly every year. Since most of his work has been extremely popular, he’s also established himself as a bit of an authority on the horror front — and isn’t shy about commenting about either the genre or his craft as a writer.
Who doesn’t love Stephen King? I’ve only read a few of his books but my wife Kim has read everything he’s ever written, including his first attempt at self publishing a digital book called The Plant.
I enjoyed following him when Twitter was around and I’m thrilled he’s joined Threads so I can follow him once again.
Now, can we please get his account connected to Mastodon?
Mozi is a social app — not in the sense of “social media.” But in the sense of interacting with other people and building relationships.
It’s nice to see an actual social app. I was working with a small group back in 2015-2016 building this exact application. It was called Jaunty but execution is what matters and Mozi is beautiful.
Abid Rahman • The Hollywood Reporter
Bluesky Hits 25M Users As Exodus From X Continues
I still prefer Mastodon but it’s really nice to see Bluesky growing and Space Karen’s social network shrinking.
I’d encourage folks to checkout Mastodon and use their mobile app to sign up and use mastodon.social as your instance, it’s the default. Once you learn how an instance works and what it means to be on a different instance you can move your account. And, no, you don’t have to move, ever. 😃
Matthew Christopher • Atlas Obscura
Even looking down from a rooftop onto the overgrown ruins of Lenin Square, it’s difficult to comprehend the scale of loss in Prypiat, Ukraine. Perhaps, like me, you’ve been fascinated by the tragedy of Chornobyl, as it is known in Ukrainian*, for decades.
I’m fascinated by Chernobyl. I remember when the meltdown was reported and the confusion and concern that followed. Things could’ve been much, much, worse.
From Brazil to Mexico and beyond, NASCAR continues emphasis on global expansion
The thing about this expansion is it’s all about having a local league. What I’d like to see is the NASCAR Cup Series go to different countries. In 2025 NASCAR will visit Mexico City and that’s a great start but I’d like to see them go to Europe and run some of the most famous tracks in the world.
[Christine Lemmer-Webber] (https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/)
A few weeks ago I wrote How decentralized is Bluesky really?, a blogpost which received far more attention than I expected on the fediverse and Bluesky both. Thankfully, the blogpost was received well generally, including by Bluesky’s team. Bryan Newbold, core Bluesky engineer, wrote a thoughtful response article: Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization, which I consider worth reading.
The two pieces from Christine and the response from Bryan Newbold are really good reads. If you’d like to understand a bit more about how ActivityPub/Mastodon work vs. ATProto.
Emily Hemphill • The Daily Progress
Standing on the corner of Water and Second streets off Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall this past September, two men tilted their heads back to fully take in the towering husk of a building that has sat derelict for roughly 16 years.
When I started at WillowTree I was in the building diagonally across from it and it’s a complete wreck and an eyesore. It should be torn down to make way for something beautiful.
I miss working on the mall. I wish the company was still down there.
The picture above was taken in December 2019, looking down on the Downtown Mall. It was the first snow of the season.
NASCAR Shocks FRM and 23XI by Withdrawing Charter Offer Amid Legal Dispute
This isn’t a surprise to me. Front Row and 23XI filed a lawsuit against NASCAR. They followed up by asking the court to not allow their current charters to expire and it sounds like NASCAR won that battle.
I hope 23XI and Front Row survive.
Electron and React Native are taking over the world
At work we’ve started using Bruno. It’s nice but it’s also an Electron App. I’m already learning React Native on iOS because we are getting a lot of requests for applications written using React Native. We build apps for clients so it makes sense for their apps to be written once so they work on both Android and iOS. They get their money’s worth, I suppose. It’s all about squeezing more out of us. But what does that say about craft? To me it says it doesn’t matter. We’ve fallen into the Accenture trap. We are hired guns who need to pound out code everyday at the fastest possible pace, with high quality of course, and use the lowest common denominator toolset. 🤢🤮
Anyway, I’m feeling a bit spicy this morning for some reason. I really need to improve my SwiftUI and pound all the new concurrency stuff into my tiny brain but I’m torn because to be useful to my company I need to become a React Native expert.
Guess I’ll have to use Stream and Top Secret Project to learn SwiftUI and Swift Concurrency. 👍🏼
Apple honors 2024 App Store Award winners
Congratulations to all the winners!
Not gonna lie, I’d love to have one of those blue beauties on my shelf. 😍
My apps need to be so much more polished and feature rich before I could even dream of such an honor. I have the likes of Unread, Reeder, and NetNewsWire to compete with. All beautifully designed and developed.
Having said that, you should go download Stream and leave me a tip! 😃
Dutch Brothers iOS App
Gotta say it, the Dutch Brothers Coffee app is really well done. It’s beautiful, stable, has a personality, and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Lets you order and pay for coffee.
I wonder who makes it? Do they do all dev work in house or do they have a studio, like WillowTree, work on it? I’m super curious.
If you know, send a message my way, rob.fahrni@gmail.com.
Heh. Since everyone is posting their Spotify Wrapped stuff I’m gonna give y’all my top artists of 2024 from Apple Music.
This isn’t surprising, at all.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
It’s been nice and chilly this week and I’m here for it. It was a balmy 18F (-7C) when I woke up this morning.
I have to run out and help our daughter move some furniture then finish decorating the house with Christmas lights so I have to scramble to put this together this morning.
I hope you enjoy the links!
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is reshaping social media, but advertising isn’t off the table
Bluesky is really catching fire all of a sudden. I’ve been finding more and more folks to follow and their Starter Pack feature is amazing! It allows you to share a list of folks to follow with anyone. Great feature. I hope Mastodon clones it. 😀
UPDATE 10:45AM: Mastodonian Jolly Jcrabapple (no relation) pointed out Mastodon DOES HAVE Starter Packs! Woo-hoo! 🥳
But I have written my last op-ed for the Times. Yesterday, I resigned my position. I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons.
The Los Angeles Times has gone off the MAGA deep end. Their billionaire owner is bending the knee to the Orange Man and Space Karen.
Steven Monacelli and Tristan Lee • Texas Observer
REVEALED: THE OPERATORS BEHIND FOUR MAJOR NEO-NAZI X ACCOUNTS
Out Nazis. We don’t want or need them in this country. We created our own, smaller, version of Nazis with the Confederacy. I see enough of that crap here in The South, I don’t need Nazis to join in.
Eve sampled more than seven million articles with unique digital object identifiers (DOIs), a string of characters used to identify and link to specific publications, such as scholarly articles and official reports. Of these, he found that more than two million were ‘missing’ from archives — that is, they were not preserved in major archives that ensure literature can be found in the future (M. P. Eve J. Libr. Sch. Commun. 12, eP16288; 2024).
This report is eye opening and very sad. We’re losing so much information. Shared knowledge is a gift to the world. All of that hard work, lost. 😞
Festivitas hangs holiday lights on your Mac
I’ve seen fun stuff like this in the past —- I had one once that would cause it to snow on your desktop. Go give Festivitas a look and support an Indie Dev if you like it. 🎅🏼
A driver moving on from a race team is a lot like graduating from school. At the year’s end, loaned items need returning and lockers cleaned out. At some point, the open-door policy ends and the keycard access denied.
Michael McDowell is moving from Front Row Motorsports to Spire Motorsports. Spire has been making big moves. Picking up Carson Hocevar and firing Corey Lajoie in favor of McDowell. The team of McDowell and Hocevar should be pretty darned good next season.
There is a recent language comparison repo which has been getting shared a lot. In it, CRuby was the third slowest option, only beating out R and Python.
This is really cool. I love reads like this. While these improvements may not make a real difference in day-to-day use I’d personally still pursue these optimizations. If you have a great suite of unit tests you should feel very confident in the rewrite of small areas of code like this. Bravo! 👏🏼
For the last 10 years, I’ve worked at a desk at home, with a desktop Mac as my primary computer. But over the last year or so, I’ve been using my MacBook Air a lot more, whether I’m traveling or spending the winter in a heated room rather than my unheated garage.
For me it’s been about a MacBook Pro — I’ve had 15, 16, and 17in versions —with full-size monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected to it at my desktop since 2007’ish. Modern M based Mac’s are blazing fast. Perfect computers, really.
I feel like I’m being watched. 🤣
Ms. Gracie living her best life. 🤣
How long will it take Trump to cross a line Americans cannot stomach?
How long after that does the next Civil War start?
How much cruelty will you put up with before doing something about it? I guess we all may have to answer that question in 2025.
Birthday Fun
We caught Red One at our local Regal on Friday afternoon and all of us really enjoyed it. 🎅🏼
We prefer Alamo Drafthouse but their last showing was on Wednesday evening. Regal worked.
It was a great way to spend my birthday. I got my free birthday Starbucks and pizza that evening. ☕️
Just a really great day. I’m a pretty simple person. I love little things with family.
It’s also a family tradition to pick a place for dinner. I chose to wait for breakfast with everyone yesterday morning. I chose Cracker Barrel. Simple, tasty, food. 🥞
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
It was nice having a short week to ease back into work, and a slow week at that as we headed into a four day weekend.
Yesterday I hit 57, the big 60 is hiding just around the corner and the walk to retirement age is just around the corner from that. It’s strange. I don’t feel that old mentally. My body is broken but my spirit and mind are doing fine.
On with the linkage! Enjoy. 😀
Eleanor Beardsley and Chandelis Duster • NPR
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, took a tour of the cathedral early on Friday. Macron marveled at the soaring light stone ceilings — now cleansed of soot and centuries of grime — as he toured the more than 800 year old restored cathedral.
With all the bad news in the world I thought I’d share some hope. It was so depressing to see Notre Dame burn. But it’s back! That’s something to celebrate.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how social networks die, these past two years. It’s an unusually personal topic. In 2009, I picked up my life to move to San Francisco and work for Twitter. I joined a startup you could fit around a giant lunch table, and left a corporation with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of users.
Watching Twitter disappear was a real loss for the web. It was mostly a great place, at least for me, and it opened us all up to a new form of communication and breaking news. We could follow our favorite news organizations and movie stars and on occasion even interact with them. It was great. Now it’s just one big dumpster fire.
Seeing ActivityPub and AT Proto come along has been a breath of fresh air. Could you imagine if Twitter was still Twitter and embraced AT Proto? That would’ve been something.
While Javascript is unavoidable, here’s how I think one should try to limit its spread.
JavaScript is eating the world, just like C did in the 80’s and early 90’s.
I’d call WillowTree a premier native iOS and Android shop, amongst other things, and now we’re doing a lot more React Native and TypeScript. I know of native iOS Apps that use JavaScript internally for business logic. It’s handy. It’s an ugly language but useful.
Formula 1 on Monday at last said it will expand its grid in 2026 to make room for an American team that is partnered with General Motors.
I’m very excited for this! I’ve wanted to see an American manufacturer back in F1 for quite a while. I know Redbull is working with Ford on a new power unit but it’s nice to see Cadillac dedicated to the entire sport. They will become my new team on the grid. I’ve low key supported Haas for a number of years and always wanted them to switch to an American power unit manufacturer. Maybe they will at some point. Haas runs Ford motors in NASCAR why not move to them for F1 if they can get Ford behind them.
Michelle Del Ray • The Independent
Amazon workers are planning to strike from Black Friday through Cyber Monday to hold the company accountable for “labor abuses, environmental degradation and threats to democracy,” organizers say.
I didn’t pay attention to this yesterday so I wonder how things went?
I had never done anything even vaguely approaching web development before I made this site. I probably couldn’t have even told you what it meant. I did have a bit of coding experience (I used a lot of python for my degree), but this was very different. I could not have done it without the help of the people who came before me and were generous enough to create guides for the rest of us. These are the resources I used the most
Neat! I love seeing folks who’ve never done this kind of work pull something beautiful together. Great work!
In her lawsuit, Gifford alleges that Sheil copied her, down to specific frames in videos. She claims that repeated pattern and Sheil’s uncannily similar content ultimately cut into Gifford’s own earnings. The similarities extend, in Gifford’s telling, beyond just video content to eerie real-life aspects like her manner of speaking, appearance, and even tattoos.
This is kind of weird. Was it intentional or did it just happen? It seems that’s the lynchpin to the case.
I’ve been helping getting MacStories setup on Bluesky this weekend and I came across a few handy sites.
I’ve been using Bluesky a bit more now that I can follow more folks I know and those famous people I like. More tools, please.
Will this be a big enough thing for folks like Iconfactory and Tapbots to enter the market?
Most people writing code that ends up running on macOS machines aren’t super familiar with the operating system, its unique features or its rough edges. That’s okay! If you’re a programmer using macOS and your code will actually end up running on a Mac rather than a server somewhere or whatever – even if your software isn’t a user-facing graphical application – then this post is for you.
I know concurrency support in Swift 6.0 is a big topic of conversation but I gotta be honest, I find it terribly confusing. Old school threading and rules around it are so much easier to grasp.
Of course I need to dive into the Swift 6.0 version of concurrency. But I think it’s good to learn it at a lower level.
Comparing ActivityPub and AT Proto is a useful exercise. It’s tempting but ultimately too simple to say that one is decentralized and one is centralized.
AT Proto is something I’d like to know more about. It’s so different but it does seem quite powerful and I wonder if parts of AT Proto could be used under ActivityPub? It seems to me like it could, unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the part I’m referring to.
I don’t know about you, but if I were to look at all of this as an outsider, it sure would look as if C++ is basically falling apart, and as if a vast amount of people lost faith in the ability of C++’s committee to somehow stay on top of this.
I can only imagine how difficult it must be to maintain backward compatibility for a language as old as C++ and continue to advance it.
I hope it doesn’t splinter and make a mess out of a tried and true low level programming language. There’s so much code out there that needs to continue working and advancing the language without breaking things is crazy challenging.
My daughter took me out for coffee this morning. Mmmmmmm, Grit.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!
Dworkin for Nazi’s
Political Reporter Scott Dworkin has a blog and a newsletter published via Substack.🤮 He should, of course, move it to something like Ghost or Buttondown or Beehiiv
But, if Mr. Dworkin is fine publishing his work using a Nazi supporting platform, he should, at minimum, change his domain name. Why would you use Substack in your domain name? I mean dworkinsubstack.com ties your content directly to a single platform. It’s right there in the name! Your content belongs to you, not Substack.
Here are a few suggestions for you:
dworkinforaliving.com
dworkinreport.com
dworkin.blog
I personally like Dworkin for a Living but the other two are pretty good if I do say so myself.
Mr. Dworkin, please, move your work to a better platform. Maybe one that doesn’t allow Nazi’s to spew hate, misinformation, and disinformation on their platform. Then get a new domain name. They’re cheap.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I made it back home yesterday after a delayed flight and an unplanned overnight stay in Dallas and I’m happy to be here. I was able to kiss my amazing wife and sleep in my own bed. It’s amazing how uncomfortable someone else’s bed can be, especially as I’ve g in otten older. 😀
I hope you enjoy these hand picked, artisanal, links. 😃
On November 12th Thomas Kurtz, the co-inventor (along with John Kemeny who passed in 1992) of the BASIC programming language died at the age of 96.
BASIC was the first language I learned and I’d say I owe my career to it.
RIP Mr. Kurtz. 🪦
In a post on X on Thursday, the author of The Shining and Shawshank Redemption wrote: “I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.” Referring to the rival platform launched by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, he added: “Follow me on Threads, if you like.”
I’m glad he finally made it somewhere else! Now all he needs to do is turn on Mastodon support for his Threads account so I can interact with him from the Fediverse. 😃
Today marks the return of a very MacStories-y feature in one of my longtime favorite apps, which – thanks to this new functionality – is gaining a permanent spot on my Home Screen. Namely, the RSS client Unread now lets you create custom article actions powered by the Shortcuts app.
Unread is just killing it! John is on a tear adding new features and fixing bugs.
I’m @manton on most networks, @manton.org on Bluesky, and @manton@manton.org on the fediverse. These are all managed by Micro.blog.
Yep. You can run everything through Micro.blog if you’d like to see Mastodon and Bluesky accounts natively. Oh, yeah, and there’s that whole blogging thing you get with it. 😃
Well, for some reason, last week I got the notion to re-try my RSS reader. Let me tell you, it was insta-awesome! It feels SO GOOD to be back on RSS. It lets me just read articles from the web — crazy, I know. RSS makes websites legible, stripping out all the distracting garbage.
I think RSS is pretty swell myself. I’m so fond of it I built my own feed reader.
Tom Bowman, Juana Summers, Scott Detrow, Greg Dixon, and Charles Maynes • NPR
Ukraine is granted permission from the Biden administration to fire U.S.-made long range missiles into Russian territory.
I’m happy we’ve done this. Poor Ukraine is going to need every tactical advantage it can get NOW. Pretty soon the Orange Turd will takeover and Ukraine is gonna be in trouble.
Apple is facing an almost £3 billion ($3.78 billion) lawsuit after British consumer group Which? on Thursday alleged that the company breached competition law by locking millions of its customers out of its iCloud service and charging them “rip-off prices.”
I have a lot of thoughts around this and it would be nice to see Apple open the users choice of storage up in a way that makes it transparent to the user. We’ll see what terrible solution they come up with to make it so unattractive to the user no one will choose to use it.
The 40-year-old Minnesota native, who retired in 2019 citing the physical toll from a series of major injuries over the course of her 18-year career, told the New York Times that she had “retired with no intention of coming back”, but was startled to discover that she was pain-free after undergoing a partial right-knee replacement surgery in April.
Having a knee replacement was a freeing experience. Free from pain and free to move about without thinking about where I’m putting my foot. But, I cannot imagine putting on skis and going down a hill at breakneck speeds.
Pro athletes have a different gear than us normals.
Good luck Lindsey! 🍀
On Bluesky, you can set your website as your username. This is one form of verification on Bluesky, and it’s our version of a “blue check.” We highly recommend that official organizations and high-profile individuals do this.
I thought I’d drop a link in here for this older post since Bluesky will let you set your own domain name. Mine is set to @fahrni.me. I love it!
Made it back to Charlottesville, finally. I got back a little after 10:30AM, grabbed a little lunch with Kim, and she drove us from Richmond to Charlottesville on our favorite route home.
It’s been a very chill afternoon, watching movies, nodding off now and again.
It’s good to be home. 🏡
Best leg room I’ve had in a long time.
Just made it! 🥵 Running on zero coffee. I don’t like it. 🤣
Charlotte, NC, here I come!
Ugh. An hour and 15-minutes early may not be early enough to get through TSA here at DFW. I’m afraid I’m gonna miss my flight. ☹️
Well, I finally made it to DFW. I’m at a local Quality Inn. Flight leaves at 5AM tomorrow so I have a 3AM wake up call and a 3:40 Uber. Ugh. 😆
Heading to Denny’s across the street. I’m hungry.
The Joy of Flying
Fun times on my trip home today. My flight was supposed to board at 5:25 this morning. Ultimately putting me home at 6:30 this evening due to a layover in Dallas. That all changed. 🤣
After a couple of updates and delays I now fly out at 12:40PM and arrive home tomorrow at 10AM.
I hope I can get a room in Dallas tonight since I arrive at 6PM and don’t fly out until 5AM tomorrow. If I can’t get a room tonight is gonna suck. 😴
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Fresno, California! ☕️
I’m in California for the next week for my fathers funeral and to settle his affairs. ❤️
I will catch y’all next weekend.
Thinking of Stream for Mac
I’ve neglected Stream for far too long and I don’t know when I’ll have the gumption to get back on it. Learning AppKit has been a slow and arduous process. I really hate when I suck at something. I know, I know, doing the work will make me better but I just don’t have the energy that 20 something me had to stay up all night learning and doing.
Once of these days I’ll get it finished. It may take years to get there but I’ll get there, I hope. 🤞🏼
Of course finishing off the 1.0 of Stream for Mac would allow me to work on Rooster, which is a new codebase and 100% SwiftUI. 😄
Lightly used MacBook Pro for sale, $3,000.00. Don’t lowball me, it’s fine. 🤣
P.S. I know it’s not a MacBook Pro, but it’s funnier this way.
