Rob Fahrni

Good morning from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! ☕️

Kim and I rented a place for a week to share with our kids, grandkids, and our dogs! We arrived around 7PM Friday evening, got setup, had some pizza, and pretty much passed out.

We haven’t had time to do any real recon of the are but I did manage to find a decent pizza joint and a Food Lion so we could pick up odds and ends to stock the fridge for the week.

From Friday to Tuesday it’s all about our kids and grandkids. Tuesday forward it’ll just be Kim and I and our oldest grandchild until next Saturday.

I was hoping to get some extra bunk time but that ain’t gonna happen with a puppy who thinks 5:30AM is play time. 🤣

We’re going to have a great time at the beach and whatever else we can drum up.

Enjoy the links.

Daring Fireball

But even just a small taste of VisionOS made me feel confident that it is going to be the next major platform for Apple and Apple developers, alongside MacOS and iOS/iPadOS.

I wasn’t too excited about any new AR/VR headset Apple was set to release, then I saw it in the keynote.

At first I was disappointed because they were showing someone in an office using it to replace their monitor(s) and that’s kind of boring.

The we see someone celebrating a child’s birthday wearing the headset. Really? What a complete douchebag. No, seriously, that’s a really bad move.

But, when I saw them demonstrate watching movies with it, I was excited! That is what I’d use it for!

Am I spending $3,500 anytime soon on one? Hell no! It’s still to early for me, especially at that price. It’s hard to justify it.

Steven Beschloss

Donald Trump himself broke the news this evening that he’s been indicted—making him the first former president to ever be charged with a federal crime.

King ding dong himself is finally being indicted for his retention of government documents. It’s not about him accidentally having a few mixed in with his other papers, it’s about boxes of them, not returning them on request, and lying that he did return them.

The right like to say “What about Biden and Pence?” Indeed, what about them. They self reported having documents and turned them over right away.

TFG is a real garbage human wrapped in a suit. My hope is, at a minimum, he’s banned from running for any federal office ever again.

Colin Paice

Easy question – hard answer, how to I convert a hex string to hex byte string in C?

Go along for the ride. I haven’t taken the time to think through how to solve this and I only have nits to pick with Colin’s solution.

Virginia Mercury

Richmond’s post-graduation mass shooting reflects America’s gun violence epidemic

This is so sickening. The shooting is absolutely horrific but to do it at a graduation? It’s heartbreaking how callous our nation has become.😔

Swift.org

This document is the reference guide describing how to mix Swift and C++

Since this was done as an official way to use C++ from Swift there was all kinds of thought out into safety. That’s fine, but if you have a great hunk of C++ that has been thoroughly tested and you feel good about it you probably don’t need the training wheels provided by this support.

Just wrap your C++ in a thin layer of Objective-C++ and call it from your Swift code without penalty. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Robert Reich

Goodbye, CNN’s Chris Licht. But what’s the lesson?

I know he screwed the pooch with that TFG interview thing but man, that was pretty quick.

512 Pixels

The number of 2019 Mac Pros sold cannot be huge, but the new one’s numbers are going to be even smaller. As a Mac Pro fan that worries me. Yes, there are users who are reliant on PCI solutions and I’m sure those folks will upgrade to this new machine at some point.

Who is this computer for? That’s the question on most folks minds. When I heard it wasn’t nearly as expandable as the 2019 version it made me wonder why they bothered? Beyond the awesome SOC it doesn’t have more to offer than its 2019 counterpart.

Then again, I’ve never been the target of this computer. I’m still using a 2019 MacBook Pro and I’m fine with it. Heck, I have a brand new M2 based MacBook Pro sitting in a box waiting for me to set it up. 🤣

Audibon.org

But as Adams scanned the bustling crowd of King Penguins, elephant seals, and Antarctic fur seals, he spotted something bizarre in the distance.

Go check out the post. This bird is gorgeous and I want it.

Jalopnik

Could The NASCAR Garage 56 Camaro Beat Every GTE Car At Le Mans?

I’d love to watch this all the way through but that’s not gonna happen. I hope NASCAR has partnered with someone to do a full documentary on it. The process from concept to reality to running the race. I hope it makes it the full 24 hours. That alone would be a huge victory.

Nah, she’s not cute. 🥺

Sacked out.

We’re in Nashville, no not that one, the one in Illinois. We’ve picked up our new pup, Cocoa, and head back home tomorrow. Kolby is gonna hate us for a while but he’s a sweet boy and will teach her the ropes. 🐶🚙

Say hi Cocoa.

I put together some tips for folks at work back in early 2020 as COVID was starting to spread like wild fire here in the States.

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I thought I’d throw some work from home tips in a doc. I’ve been working from home off and on for the past 20+ years, give or take.

1. Keep your routine - get up at the same time, prepare for the day the same way you always do.
2. Get dressed for work - Dress how you’d dress for work. I need this one otherwise I’d lay about all day in my PJ’s. It’s so easy to get lazy, at least for me it is.
3. Create a dedicated workspace - This one can be tough, but if you’re able, do it. This allows for a bit of separation mentally between work and home life. If I don’t do this everything starts to blur together.
4. Take breaks - Since you’re home it’s easy to skip these. Take a few minutes, get up, stretch, and walk around. Go outside, take a walk. If you have a pet, take them for a walk. They’ll love you for it! Chill during lunch. I like to eat away from my workspace and on occasion I’ll watch a bit of TV.
5. Work outside - I love doing this on nice days. I’ll work outside for a bit. It kind of goes against having a dedicated space but it’s a nice change. I tend to do this in the morning while sipping coffee. It’s so beautiful here. I’m really looking forward to trying it.

Everyone has to find a rhythm that works for them. These are the things that work for me.

When I initially started working from home I would get up, get dressed, eat breakfast (not always), and drive my kids to school. When I got home I was at work. I’d walk into my office, close the door, and go to work. It may sound silly but I needed it to get me in the proper frame of mind. If it would help you, take a quick drive to emulate driving to work.

I plan on getting out a bit. Going to the store for the usual stuff; milk, coffee, etc. The daily necessities. I’ll batch them up but I need a bit of time away from the house to preserve my sanity.

My friends know how much I love contrails — as in condensation trail.

More stuff blooming!

Yesterday and today. What a difference a day makes.

Kim’s roses are happy and just starting to put off blooms.

There have been some critters gnawing on the leaves.

I hear folks say “Stop calling the GOP Nazis.” Fine. I’ll stop when they stop behaving like Nazis.

Love that little tongue sticking out. 👅

I fell for Ms. Priss’ trap. She rolled onto her back, exposing her belly, and sprung the trap when I started rubbing it. 😆

Just watching a little TV.

This fella knows how to live. He parties all night and sleeps all day.

More flowers coming in.

Flynn in his natural state.

Kim’s lilacs are coming in.

Kim’s first set of seasonal flowers are coming in. I love watching this area of our flower beds progress through the seasons. One set of flowers will die back as another set emerges. It’s amazing.

Momma Eastern Bluebird is giving me the stink eye. She’s not happy I’m 10 feet away as she builds her nest. Dad shows up once in a while to stare me down. 😆

Sitting on the front porch this morning, enjoying a nice cup-o-joe while I work.

Since I don’t really code any longer I had to open my Stream project so I’d look like a legit developer. 🤣

You can support my endeavors as an “Indie” dev by downloading Stream and leaving a tip! Thank you! 🙏🏼

This is the largest “refactor” I’ve done with my Home Screen in a really long time. I even moved one of my apps — RxCalc — to a different screen and stashed it in a group.

Just mowed the lawn — weeds — for the first time this year. Cut down a small tree for Kim, it was in really bad shape, and trimmed up some stumps remaining from last years post snowstorm cleanup.

It’s nice to get the yard cleaned up a bit but I’m pooped out. My legs are like “DUDE! We’re too old for this!” 😁

I’m not sure what kind of birdie this is but it’s a beautiful blue and orange. The picture doesn’t do it justice.

Good morning y’all. It’s raining this morning, a repeat performance of last weekend. I did manage to get the steps completed in the garden now we let the rain test my work.

This week I had to get a tooth and removed and a bone graft due to a 20 plus year old root canal failing. I don’t recommend it. 🦷

Time to go lay down in a field and have Kim throw some dirt on me. 😂

CNN

On Monday, it was Nashville’s turn to join the roster of cities made notorious by a mass shooting epidemic much of the country seems prepared to tacitly accept as the price of the right to own high-powered firearms. 

No words. 😔

Microsoft Design

Today marks the debut of the new Microsoft Teams app, released in public preview for Windows customers.

This redesign of Teams looks extremely thoughtful, well planned, and well executed. I’d like to get my hands on it and run it through dumpbin and other tools to see just how it’s put together.

It’s my understanding it’s a native app — no more Electron — with an HTML/CSS/JavaScript filling using the new, Chromium based, WebView2 control

It also means no Mac or Linux client until they can get those items ported to Mac and Linux. You can write C#/.Net code on Linux and Mac today, but as far as I know WebView2 hasn’t been ported. Heck, who knows, the shell around the app could be written in C++? I’m not really clear on that bit, it’s why I want to get my hands on it. 😁

Wired

The US Republican Party has become increasingly authoritarian and extreme in recent years, and it doesn’t seem likely to moderate that in the foreseeable future.

Red States are becoming more and more radical. The entire anti-LGBQT, anti-woman, anti-education, movement is in full swing.

Next thing you know women will have to walk 10 paces behind their husbands in their modest to the ground dress with their eyes on the ground. Disgusting.🤬

Dave Winer

In September 2004, the activity we called audioblogging was starting to gain traction.

Neat little story about how podcasting got its name. 👍🏼

The Guardian

A dispute between the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Disney over control of the company’s Florida theme park district hinges on a clause referencing King Charles III and his descendants.

The authoritarian was outwitted in this story. If you haven’t heard about this yet go read it. 🤭

John Nunley

This year is supposed to be the year of the Rust GUI. So why is it still so unsafe?

This discussion focused around handles in Windows is quite interesting.

Having written a lot of Windows code that uses handles everywhere — HWND, HINSTANCE, HANDLE, anyone(?) — because that’s the way the Windows API works I don’t see it as an issue.

A HANDLE is a persisted thing that allows Windows to shuffle the underlying object around if needed. It’s a remnant of 16-bit Windows days, because 640k of memory was a precious commodity. It’s a safe thing to the developer as I see it but I do not fault anyone wanting to make things even safer for developers. 👍🏼

John Scalzi

Trump is and has always been the sort of person who believes that laws are for the little people, and has acted accordingly.

I love John Scalzi’s books and prior to Twitter becoming a worthless piece of poo I really enjoyed reading his tweets. In case you don’t know he’s had a blog for many years and it doesn’t disappoint.

Judo Blog

We believe that designer-developer handoff is broken and to solve this problem well requires software that is familiar to designers and developers alike—software that makes building an app’s user interface a collaborative process instead of handing off files back and forth.

I’d really like to take a look at Judo to see how it could improve my own coding efforts. Stream for Mac could use some help. It’s been a slog for me and I keep switching between AppKit and SwiftUI. I really need to focus on SwiftUI going forward.

Los Angeles Times

Only two centuries ago, a shallow inland sea dominated California’s Central Valley.

Tulare Lake is fascinating. California Highway 41 runs right through the lake between Lemoore and Kettleman City. I’ve heard tale in the olden days one had to catch a barge or take a boat from Lemoore to Kettle City.

We drove that route all the time when we lived there. It’s one way to get from the San Joaquin Valley to the Central Coast and all the lovely towns and beaches we fell in love with. Places like San Luis Obispo, Avila Beach, Cambria, Morro Bay, and Pismo Beach.

As it is today you’d have to go out to I-5 and loop back to get to Kettleman City.