Early AM Brain Dump

I was given Prednisone to help heal up my back. This stuff does horrible things to me. Like waking up at 3AM.

Brain in a jarMy brain is going a million miles per hour. This is what happens when I enter a manic phase, but I’m pretty sure it’s the meds this time.

Some thoughts. This is a brain dump after all.

Stream

I need to get to work on Stream, like desperately. My last release added a teeny tiny feature that I started two days after Christmas in 2021! That’s pathetic.

Stream for Mac is languishing. It’s not in an alpha state yet. It can successfully open its database, refresh feeds you’re subscribed to, and update the UI. It must be done, right? Hardly. There’s so much to do.

When I decided to do Stream for Mac I went with AppKit for everything. Now I’m wondering if I should go all in on SwiftUI? Currently leaning yes.

Mastodon is fantastic!

Yep, that’s right, Mastodon is fantastic. I got my account some time in late 2017 or early 2018, I don’t remember exactly when. Once I understood it a bit better I spun up my own instance and haven’t looked back, I’m loving it.

Mastodon on the Mac

I know of one native Mac App for Mastodon: Mastonaut. It’s now opened sourced and I’d love to spend some time on it. How much time will I spend on it? See my earlier comments above about Stream. Unlikely, but I’d love to.

If you’re a Mac Dev or Designer go help out the Mastonaut project. It could use some TLC.

What’s he thinking?

The Chief Chaos Monkey at Twitter continues his trip down the Q rabbit hole and is totally breaking parts of Twitter by banning folks who link to other sites he considers harmful. Of course Mastodon is on that list.

Of course he reversed that decision later and is now polling folks to see if he should step down as CEO. Who does that? I’ll tell you who. A man that can’t actually run a company, that’s who. Hire me, I’ll give it a shot.

The Back

My back is not so great at the moment. Is this what it’s like to age? I have a feeling it’s not this way for everyone, I mean, how could it be? I have more than a few things working against me. Genetics, obesity, being sedentary, and a totally disregard for my body as a youngster.

All of those things are working against me. I can take care of two; being sedentary and obesity.

Before having knee replacement surgery it was extremely difficult to be up and moving for longer than 30 minutes without looking for a place to sit. It was no way to live, I was existing.

Good news! I got that knee fixed and it’s doing really well! Then two weeks ago today I injured my back putting on a shoe and I’ve been in agony ever since. Last week was the worst. Over the weekend I started feeling a little better and by last night I could walk around – using my cane – without too much discomfort if I took it slow.

This morning it’s painful to do anything. The mornings are the worst. I’ll hit the shower in a bit and let some hot water run on it. It helps a bit.

Once my back is feeling better I must commit myself to, once again, lose weight. Exercise and watching what I eat are the two keys to my success. Both are easier said than done.

That’s it for a glimpse inside my brain this morning. 😃

Bringing back the joy

Mark Jardine

When I heard the news that the sale of Twitter went through, I was literally shaking. My family and I have had a rough year health-wise. My wife was diagnosed with Lupus and my 5 year old started having panic attacks out of nowhere that resulted in seizure-like symptoms. We had to up our health insurance premium to $2500 a month (Yay America!) for access to specialists previously not in our network. Then I had a bad crash on my bike where I had a concussion and lost consciousness.

A wonderful bouquet of flowers. Read the entire thread it’s a really great read by a Tapbots co-founder. They’ve gone all in on creating a brand spanking new app for Mastodon called Ivory and it’s stunning. I’d expect nothing less from this little company of two.

Beyond the iOS version I hear they’re bringing their Mac version to Mastodon as well. Sweet!

Now, if we could convince The Iconfactory to bring good ole Ollie to Mastodon I’d be happier than a pig in slop.

Saturday Morning Coffee

What a week! That dude that took over Twitter is driving it in the ground with a gigantor hammer all while we watch from the cheap seats sipping our soda and eating popcorn. What a spectacle.

This week was a busy week at work, promotion time. Lots of meetings. I’m all Zoom’ed out.

Enjoy that morning elixir of life. I certainly am. ☕️

Spicy Mexican Coffee

Wired

Eugen Rochko looks exhausted. The 29-year-old German programmer is the founder of Mastodon, a distributed alternative to Twitter that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users.

I’ve heard some folks doubt the survivability of Mastodon and doubt hate can be squashed there. In my experience on the platform it’s quite the opposite. If you’re running a server full of racist white nationalists, Nazis, or other hate groups it’s extremely easy for the admin of your server to block federation of that entire server.

I’ve found Mastodon to be so much better for conversation with folks outside my little friend bubble on Twitter.

Brent Simmons

For writers, artists, podcasters, journalists, and people who make things in public, Twitter was the one social networking site we all had to use.

Brent is a long time blogger, Mac programmer, creator and leader of the NetNewsWire team, and all around great guy. If you’re a consumer of RSS point your feed reader to his site. It’s a great read.

Platformer

Musk went on to say that “Twitter will be much more engineering-driven,” and that while design and product “will still be very important,” engineers “will have the greatest sway.” And then Musk presented employees with an ultimatum: click “yes” on a Google form affirming your desire to “be part of the new Twitter,” or leave in exchange for three months’ pay.

I’ve heard from a friend that most of the US Engineering staff left. That’s just wild.

I don’t have a NY Times subscription but I’ll bet this piece by Mr. Roth is quite good.

Daring Fireball

If you had told me three weeks ago that Twitter, as a company, would today be embroiled in turmoil — perhaps outright existential crisis — over a company-wide email from Elon Musk centered around the phrase “extremely hardcore”, v-1 is not the scenario I’d have imagined.

In my career I’ve worked for some hardcore companies, like the old Microsoft, it’s not fun. Don’t do it.

I don’t understand why he continues to ask for snippets of code from his employees. It’s just some random metric he’s using to what what end? What about the devs who made Twitter better by removing code?

CNN

Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that layoffs had begun at the company, two days after multiple outlets the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees this week.

It’s been a rough couple weeks in the tech sector. I’m sorry to see so many folks having to deal with this. Here’s hoping they land on their feet quickly.

Fresnoland

While Central Valley agricultural leaders warn of jobs loss during California’s ongoing drought, some local leaders say it’s time for less water-dependent economic opportunities.

California is in deep trouble so the United States food supply is in deep trouble. You’ll see it at the grocery store.

Becky Hansmeyer

When I tweeted my way into the iOS community so many years ago, I felt the same energy and excitement, if not necessarily the same level of closeness. You all gave me the confidence I needed to keep going with programming when I felt like giving up. We’ve person. Like her I lament the loss of the Twitter we knew but all good things come to an end, right?

America, America

I’m not anywhere close to assuming redemption for Rupert Murdoch or his publication for their role in empowering the dangerous desecration of the last six years, particularly since Fox News showed reluctance in quitting the man by airing nearly all of his sour announcement. (For me, the announcement at Mar-a-Lago had more of the air of a man running from the law than running for the presidency.)

How TFG avoids jail time at this point is beyond me.

The Register

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich has had it with C and C++, time-tested programming languages commonly used for native applications that require high performance.

Russinovich is a legendary software engineer. It’s gonna be interesting to see how many new products come out of Microsoft and other companies written in 100% Rust.

The Brookings Institution

In this second edition of our October 2021 report, we review the investigation and its basis. We assess the publicly known facts and relevant law and analyze the extent to which the former president may be held criminally responsible for his conduct in Georgia. We conclude that Trump is at substantial risk of criminal prosecution in Fulton County.

At substantial risk? How is he not already in handcuffs? If any of us “regular” people had done this we’d be thrown in a dungeon.

Jalopnik

Haas’ Kevin Magnussen just scored his first-ever pole position in Formula 1 during the Brazilian Grand Prix. Yes, I intended to write that sentence. It’s not April Fool’s Day. Kevin Magnussen is polesitter for Saturday’s sprint race.

I support Haas. It’s an American F1 team and I’m happy for Kevin Magnussen and Haas. Now, get some podiums! 😂

PZ Meyers

Between the Church Militant and Nick Fuentes, it’s pretty clear what the theocratic Right wants to do: they want to kill you or force you to be as mad as they are.

Nick Fuentes is a piece of work but at least he’s not hiding his White Christian Nationalism behind dog whistles, no sir, he’s just saying it out loud.

Go check out that tweet thread. It’s full of Twitter Employees saying goodbye after the hardcore time limit expired.

It’s a sad day for the social network. How long will it stay up?

Tiny Apple Core

Stream Wish

Brain in a jarI have plenty of work to do on Stream, plenty. I have a list of features a mile long. Some submitted by the fine folks using Stream — thank you! — some right out of my goofy brain. Yes, I wish I could move faster, yes I’d like to do this full time. Yes, yes, yes!

The best I can do is muster is an hour here an hour there. Anywho, I’m putting this idea out here. It’s one I’ve added to the Stream list. It’s absolutely something I want.

Read Later

I use Pocket as my read later app. It plays a crucial role in collecting posts and news for Saturday Morning Coffee. What I’d really love to have is a read later feature in Stream. One of these decades it’ll happen.

Twitter Support

It would be much better if these features were part of Twitter.

First, I’d love to be able to follow Twitter Lists as if it were an RSS feed. This is a very selfish feature because I have a Twitter List called Politics. It has all my favorite news sources and other sources of politics. I made it because Politics can really stress me out, especially around election time. I’d like this so I could follow any list from any Tweeter, including my own. Of course it would be best to be able to do it without going through Twitter’s authentication system, but I supposed I need that so I can use the API.

Second, it love to have an extension to Stream that could unroll a Twitter thread into a nice single post. That’s it. That’s the feature.

Here’s what it would look like. This example used Thread Reader and Pocket. Stream could be great at this if its darned developer would get off his butt and write some code. 🙃

I don’t know why I’d like to do this, but I’d love to do a Mac and Windows word processor that implements a WordStar clone. All the way down to keyboard shortcuts and file format.

Some writers still use WordStar as their word processor of choice.

Of course there are projects I will spend my time on instead of this odd thought.

Stream comes to mind. 😃

Saturday Morning Coffee

My first cup of coffee is poured and cooling a bit, our old kitty — Khloe — is in my lap, and I’m sat in my writing spot at the end of the couch nearest the front window. It’s cloudy and raining and the wind is blowing. I’m not sure if it’s remnants of Ian yet or just a regular storm. Guess we’ll find out. 🌧️

CNN: “Ian slammed into southwest Florida as a severe Category 4 hurricane Wednesday, packing sustained winds of 150 mph. Officials believe the death toll of at least 45 people is likely to climb in the coming days as searchers access areas that had been blocked by debris and floodwaters.”

What a tragic week for Floridians. So many folks displaced and damage beyond belief. Homes and businesses wiped completely off the map, land reclaimed by sand. And the there is the human toll. 😢

Take care my Florida friends. ❤️

Travel Radar: “There have been multiple reports of strange noises coming from American Airlines in recent weeks that neither the passengers nor crew members could explain. Some passengers have been airing their confusion across social media.”

It’s the perfect time of the year to have mysterious moaning sounds coming out of the speaker system on a flight.

It doesn’t sound like an equipment failure to me. I’m going with ghosts. 👻

When the big players figure out they can automate a money making machine they have to get involved and screw everything up.

Luckily we still have great Indie Podcasts to listen to.

TechCrunch: “Now, a Spanish startup called Penpot — which is taking a new approach to design collaboration through an open source platform that brings designers and developers into the mix simultaneously — says that it’s been seeing a huge amount of adoption since the Figma deal.”

I happened across Penpot a month or so before the Adobe purchase of Figma. It’s really nice and if you’re looking for a Figma alternative you might want to give it a look.

Bleacher Report: “Odell Beckham Jr. questioned why all NFL stadiums don’t feature grass fields after former New York Giants teammate Sterling Shepard suffered a non-contact knee injury on the MetLife Stadium turf on Monday night.”

This is not the first time turf has become controversial. I remember back in the 70’s or 80’s this being a topic of conversation. That was before this new wave of turf became a thing.

I’ve always been a fan of grass fields. Bring them back to every stadium you possibly can. I want to see some filthy uniforms.

Apple Newsroom: “Amid the tools used by archaeologists for centuries — trowels, buckets, brushes, and pickaxes — there’s a new piece of equipment: iPad Pro.”

I am so here for this. Seeing tools used in ways you never expected is always such a joy for the developer.

Congratulations to Top Hatch, the makers of Concepts, and my friend Marc Palmer who is a developer on the engineering team! 👍🏼

Politico: “A federal judge delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican Party leaders Tuesday for what she said was a cynical attempt to stoke false claims of election fraud of the kind that fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”

I really wish Republican leaders weren’t so power hungry and had the guts to all come out against TFG.

Here’s hoping one of the many troubles TFG has leads to conviction and elimination from running for public office. 🤞🏼

9to5Mac: “This week, a new Instagram client called “OG App” caught the attention of the internet as it promised a better Instagram experience without advertisements or content suggestions from people you don’t know. The app seemed too good to be true, but it has now been taken down – not by Meta, but by Apple.”

If you’re surprised by this, don’t be. Instagram cut off developers long ago. At one time there were plenty of great Instagram clients, even for iPad!

It’s a closed platform. The best we can hope for is alternate services — like Glass — to catch on and take a big share of Instagrams user base.

Of course the United States, Britain, and Ukraine aren’t the only countries in complete disarray. Iran is having another revolution. Women are coming out in force to demand equal rights and an end to its totalitarian regime.

Yahoo Sports: “Again, if you don’t like the “White Bengal” look with the black stripes — which included the debut of the white helmet with black stripes on Thursday night — then it’ll be a while before you find an NFL uniform you like.”

I loved the white out uniforms worn by the Bengals Thursday night. Being a Bears fan I’m really looking forward to seeing the new orange helmets the Bears will be wearing on special occasions this year.

I kind of wish they’d go orange helmets with their navy blue color rush uniform but they’re not going that direction

Hayseed Blog: “I’m happy to announce a new Stream release. Version 1.3 is a minor release with one new feature and two bug fixes.”

I wish I could turn this little project into my full time gig. Heck, I’d be super happy with a few hundred bucks a month! 🤣

That aside I am proud of my little labor of love and hope you’ll give it a look.

Getting this version out the door has allowed me to get back to the Mac version. It’s slow going since this is my first real Mac app but I do hope to ship it at some point. 😄

Time for my third cup. ☕️

Tiny Apple Core

I should get my act together and get a TestFlight build of Stream put together. 😂

Stream Update

I managed to work on Stream a bit over the weekend and once again I have that ”I wish I could do this full time” desire.

I have a list of things to do a mile long. I checked my checkins — say that five times fast — and I haven’t worked on the Mac version in well over a year. Pathetic.

I did manage to get very close to finishing off a new little feature over the weekend. This feature will allow you to set the number of days Stream will keep posts. It’s a sliding scale from one to 31 that defaults to 30, because 30 is the hard coded value in the version in the wild.

I like the way it’s come together and need to fix an annoying bug that cropped up on iOS 15.5 — possibly other versions — then I’ll get a beta out the door.

A cute little monkey.For the technically minded. This bug is clearly my fault. I have a layout issue my table view cells, there are two types. It would seem that iOS 15.5 has tightened up, or changed, the auto layout engine in UIKit that exposed my bug. I say it’s iOS 15.5 but it could be all 15.x. 🐞

I’m still digging. Hopefully I don’t wait another eight months to work on it again. 😳

Saturday Morning Coffee

FrapThe United States Supreme Court continues to be a complete mess whose only job appears to be dismantling prior rulings and dialing our nation back a century.

Golden Hill Software: “I am excited to announce that Unread 3.0 is available now from the App Store. Unread 3.0 adds Unread Cloud, a new syncing and article retrieval system for Unread.”

John Brayton, the person behind Golden Hill, is a friend and competitor. Unread is a beautiful, highly functional, and very stable application. With the addition of Unread Cloud, John has taken Unread to the next level.

Checkout the Golden Hill Blog for more details on Unread Cloud. There’s some great content up there.

Of course I’d encourage you to use Stream as well as Unread.😃

The New Yorker: “Regardless of this detail, Hutchinson’s testimony appeared to strengthen the criminal case against Trump. One of her revelations was that, a few days before January 6th, Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, had explicitly warned that if Trump did go to Capitol Hill on January 6th he could potentially be implicated in the crimes of obstructing justice and obstructing the electoral count.”

Trump is a criminal. A poo spouting, lying, criminal, who’s a real threat to our democracy.

Swift.Org Developer Spotlight: “I learned Swift by porting Graphing Calculator’s core computer algebra system. It started as a learning exercise, then became a feasibility study. The pandemic played a role in that decision, as this became my pandemic shelter-in-place project. The refactoring could have been done in C++ and Objective-C++, but it would not have been as effective, nor as much fun.”

This is a really great read. The developer of Graphing Calculator walks us through his effort to port his old code base to a modern Swift/SwiftUI application, complete with AR features!

He also relays his SwiftUI experience.

“When SwiftUI works it is a nigh-magical delight, but when it behaves unexpectedly or when behavior outside the prescribed path is desired, it can be difficult to understand and work around its limitations.”

If you’re a developer take the time to read the post. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Some states in our Beautiful Union have become Gilead. It’s pathetic, dangerous, and extremely cruel.

Also, whoever impregnated a 10-year old should be put down like a rabid dog. Rape and incest are one of those things that makes me angry enough to commit murder because it robs the victim of their soul. It’s worse than murder in my opinion. They’re alive and dead at the same time.

The Podcast Index: “The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.”

This is something I believe the podcast ecosystem needs. An open podcast directory. I’ve even written about such a thing

The big question for me is, will indie podcast apps make use of it? I’m thinking of Castro and Overcast in particular. Both run their own directories, as well as other backend services, but The Podcast Index makes me wonder if they could replace their directories with this?

I’m sure it comes down to a matter of trust and control. I know it would be really difficult to make such a bold decision.

SFist: “California is pushing for green energy and wants to avoid blackouts, but giving PG&E $75 million to handle radioactive waste at Diablo Canyon may sound like a deal with the devil.”

I love California but she has her problems. It’s crazy expensive to live in the Golden State and continued drought coupled with fire creates monstrous problems to cope with.

PG&E doesn’t have the best reputation. Their lack of line maintenance has caused numerous fires in California, including the massive Camp Fire that killed 84 people in 2018.

Apple announced and displayed a new version of CarPlay at WWDC 2022. Can they compete?

I also wonder if car manufacturers will have to pay Apple 30% of each car sale? 🥴

Tiny Apple Core

Stream + Twitter

Something I’ve considered adding to Stream is the ability to follow Twitter lists.

The reason I’d like to have it is I have a Twitter list called Politics I’d like to follow.

I thought this could be an interesting, differentiating, feature.

Of course there are many features on my list. So many it’s honestly overwhelming when I think about them all.

Some others include; iCloud syncing, Feedbin, Feedly, Labels, Filtering, and many, many more.

So much time, so few features. Scratch that, reverse them. So many features, so little time.

It never fails. When I get to the end of a project I get a little down and start thinking of my own little software projects. 🌾

Which makes me wish I could do those full time. 🕛

Every time.

My brain is weird. 🧠

Y’all ready to see the bump Stream got when Musk announced he was buying Twitter!

Drumroll please. 🥁

Yep, I got that nice day of three downloads!

I am greateful folks do take the time to consider Stream. 🙏🏼

Free and Opinionated

NetNewsWire Blog: “Our mission is to make the best RSS reader that we like making. We value stability, high performance, clarity, and lots of figurative air and space rather than a mélange of features.”

I love how Brent and the NNW team hold true to what they believe – and what they want – a feed reader to be.

If you haven’t checked out NNW you really should, it’s a great product.

Stream by the Numbers

A week in the life of Stream, my feed reader.

My favorite bit to look at is what Territories folks are in. I love that my app is being used – at least downloaded – all over the world.

I think about localization often. What languages would I start with? German seems like a good start, but based on the numbers Chinese would be a better bet.

Stream Update

I feel like I’ve been working on this app forever. 😀

But, I haven’t. It’s been a couple years of fits-and-starts. The last TestFlight build I sent out was, I believe, back in late February.

I only have a few new items to add then it’s all about bug fixes.

What’s left?

Import and Export OPML

I have the core of importing and exporting working fine. It’s what I worked on today.

The one stumbling block I have is where it fits in the UI, like it’s a little thing. I have some ideas, of course, but I’m not thrilled about any of them. I’ll probably pick the least icky idea and do that.

Once that’s done I’d imagine the Export feature will live next to it.

Sharing

This goes two ways. I’d like to add an extension that will allow someone to Add to Stream from a web browser and I’d like to allow folks to share out of the article view. This should allow folks to start a blog post of their own or post to their favorite social media site.

Nice to haves

Extra Icons

I have some beautiful icons to share with everyone and I really hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

Tip Jar

I’ve struggled with this one a bit. Stream is going to be free. It’s not going to be something folks just gotta have. I did this for me. I wanted an app that was simple and felt more like a Twitter feed. I think it hits both marks.

The reason I’ve struggled with the idea of having a tip jar is I don’t want folks to feel like they have to pay anything for it. I would appreciate it but it’s not necessary.

Wrapping up

I have a few bugs I’m aware of, mostly around stripping of HTML tags.

Thanks for following along.