Flynn likes to crawl up in my arms and be held like a baby.
Saturday Morning Coffee
I’ve had a head cold for the past week and my body is finally getting on top of it, finally. As a result I’m tired this morning and my brain is foggy and doesn’t want to do anything. Coffee to the rescue, I hope! ☕️
Hope you enjoy the links.
More than 23,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, officials said.
It’s been a very sad week for the people of Turkey and Syria. So many dead and wounded. I haven’t kept up with it like I normally would for such a tragedy. Why is that?
Thankfully people are still being rescued from the rubble. America needs to send help.
According to The Register, Google and Mozilla have recently been spotted working on versions of Chromium and Firefox that use their normal Blink and Gecko rendering engines, respectively.
It doesn’t surprise me to hear Google and Mozilla have native browsers built for iOS. Why not, their code is very portable already, it makes sense.
Some competition on the platform would be good for Apple and consumers.
It’s hardly insightful to suggest that the last few years have substantially changed the day to day experience of a knowledge worker. Nearly overnight even the most remote skeptical leadership teams were forced to embrace flexible work practices like working from home.
At WillowTree our CEO, Tobias, is a huge proponent of working in the office full time. When COVID hit we were just getting ready to move into our newly renovated building at Woolen Mills, but that didn’t happen and everybody went remote.
Fast forward a year and a half later and WillowTree is making preparations to return to the office on a hybrid schedule. Then COVID spiked again so it was out on hold. Eventually a poll was taken, we do lots of polls at WillowTree, asking if folks preferred in office or work from home. Tobias himself was shocked to learn that over 20% of the company preferred it.
Things changed based on the poll and a team was created to that would allow anyone to work from anywhere. I’m part of that team and I love it. I’m grateful our leadership is open to big change. So far it’s been really amazing.
Facebook for iOS (FBiOS) is the oldest mobile codebase at Meta. Since the app was rewritten in 2012, it has been worked on by thousands of engineers and shipped to billions of users, and it can support hundreds of engineers iterating on it at a time.
If you’re a developer go read this piece. When folks think of mobile software they most likely think of toy sized apps like Stream, not a lot going on. Then you run into a beast of a codebase like Facebook and you realize mobile software is “real” bonafide software with real challenges.
In the past few decades, however, rather than building new protocols, the internet has grown up around controlled platforms that are privately owned.
This is a piece from 2019 and it holds up really well. He’s basically discussing what ActivityPub and Mastodon have become. A lot of the challenges around siloed social networks is around “free speech.” I put that in quotes because most folks think free speech is a free for all, anything goes, and you can’t ban me because I said something nasty or threatening to you. Of course a platform could ban you and it has nothing to do with free speech. Companies and individuals don’t have to take the abuse and can choose to ban you if they want. Mastodon has helped this in many ways. I run my own Mastodon server and it’s by invitation only so I know and trust the folks on it to maintain a certain decorum. I know they won’t be nasty or threatening and it’s self policing. We need more small instances with better community management.
Today we’re introducing Wildebeest, an open-source, easy-to-deploy ActivityPub and Mastodon-compatible server built entirely on top of Cloudflare’s Supercloud.
I read through this post and I think it’s really wonderful to see addition ActivityPub based services come online. It’s an exciting time!
About the tech experience on Mastodon. This is the last of three posts I have on Mastodon. I’ve been on the app for more than two months and have been content to ghost Twitter.
A nice series of posts about one persons experience with Mastodon. If you have friends fearful of joining they should go read this and see what someone else has experienced. Sure, it’s not Twitter, it’s even better, and it’s growing day by day.
Jack Dorsey believed Twitter should be open, not a silo. Mastodon and ActivityPub are delivering that vision. A central hub, controlled by a single corporation, is no longer in charge. The people are.
After 30 years of dominance, the industry has come to come view Intel as a giant who has fallen on hard times. We do not think this is the right way to view the company, and it creates mental blind spots which hinder our ability to assess what are the right next steps for the company.
It’s hard to believe Intel is having so much trouble. They coasted for so long on their x86 architecture and still make a ton of money from it but the times they are a changing. Apple creating their own, much better, silicon must scare the pants off of Intel internally. They’re lucky Apple doesn’t care to sell their tech to any computer manufacturer. Imagine a Windows PC running on Apple Silicon. That would be glorious. 😃
What is somewhat more puzzling to me is the nature or character of the people who are attracted to this type. The toadies and sycophants, the enablers and lickspittles who compete for proximity to someone in power, someone in control.
I love reading Dave’s stuff. He’s an extremely kind, compassionate, man and a great writer. Unfortunately he lives in Florida and that state is full of looney birds, especially at the government level. Their Governor is is King Looney, a complete nutter, with fantasies of making Florida a totalitarian government run by him. His desire to control everything is exactly the opposite of a free nation and against everything our nation was founded on. He needs to go.
Dave, like many of us, can’t understand why people want this sort of strongman creating horrible policy in charge. Why would you want your rights squashed? You’re American, don’t you believe in freedom for all?
Ms. Priss is tired. Nighty night.
Flynn just woke up and now he’s crawled back under the blanket, is making dough, and is going to go back to sleep.
Rough life.
That is cold! 🥶
On Friday night, a new national record for lowest wind chill temperature was likely recorded at the tallest peak in the Northeast, Mount Washington in New Hampshire, with a reported wind chill of minus 108 degrees Fahrenheit – thanks to a temperature of minus 46 and wind gusts of 127 mph. Wind chill records are not historically tracked as closely as temperature records, but the mark would beat other lows set.
I can’t imagine how that must feel. Can you even go out in it without consequence?
Here in Charlottesville we’d be in one hell of a pickle. The electric grid is made of toilet paper and goes down when we get a bit of snow. 🧻
Kitties gonna kitty! We cover the guest bedroom bed with a blanket just for the kitties.
After a few days of gray brother and sister found the sun. 😸☀️
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning coffee lovers! Hope you’re ready for some randomness because you’re gonna get some. Cheers! ☕️
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in homes without power for a second day Thursday, most of them around booming Austin, and fading hopes of a quick fix stirred grim memories of a deadly 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm across the southern U.S.
Poor Texans are, once again, struggling through big cold snap. It’s not surprising though, the GOP run state doesn’t care about people, only profits.
I read something yesterday that rings true: How can you tell when you’re going to have six more weeks of winter? Ted Cruz goes to Mexico.
Folks, stop voting for Republicans. They don’t care about you one little bit.
HBO’s The Last of Us tries a little tenderness in a surprising episode 3
This was a fantastic episode! We got to see a couple live their best lives under terrible circumstances. I didn’t play the game so I didn’t know Bill was gay but he was already an interesting character up to that point. A prepper with the talent of a gourmet chef and a musician. Being gay was just the cherry on top and his commitment to his partner was heart warming. This episode was a quiet reprieve to what I’d imagine will be non-stop violence to the bitter end.
Tom Brady says he is retiring “for good” from football, ending a storied 23-year NFL career during which the star quarterback won seven Super Bowls and set numerous records.
Tom, Tom, Tom. I have a horrible feeling Mr. Brady returned to football because his wife broke the news to him that she wanted a divorce not long after he retired. Football was the distraction he needed to get through it. Now the divorce is final, he’s suffered that initial pain, and it’s time to move on.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that Tom. Divorce is nothing but pain for all involved. I hope you have a beautiful life. You are football’s GOAT.
Because of Twitter’s announcement that free access to the Twitter API will end February 9, we will be removing Twitter integration from NetNewsWire in the next release (6.1.1) for Mac and iOS.
Space Karen strikes again! This time he’s hitting anyone whow uses the Twitter API. He’s tightening up while over on Mastodon things remain completely open for business! Following folks on Mastodon from your favorite feed read is so easy you don’t need a special plug-in to do it! It supports RSS right out of the box. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Also, who wants this domain? It would be great for a Space Karen watch site, like Twitter is going great.
Before the present owner, I was a Twitter Blue customer, because I always pay for software—to support its creators and help prevent it from disappearing, as so many great websites and platforms have done over the years.
Jeffrey Zeldman is an American treasure and web hero. I’ve enjoyed reading him for years and years now. This time Jeffrey shares his adventure of trying to give Twitter money. Their payment system failed. Doesn’t surprise me.
The authoritarian strongman types want us to believe in their power. They may even want us to think that their power is divinely influenced, a sign that they’re not like the rest of us, but better. Look no further than the surreal video released just weeks before the Florida gubernatorial election, complete with Voice of God-style narration and mad text about how Ron DeSantis is the fulfillment of God’s plan for a protector and a fighter.
I’m sure Florida has it’s share of wonderful people but why would you choose to live there? DeSantis is a true authoritarian scared of America’s future without bullies like him. Future America will happen. You may slow it down but it will happen. I hope to one day have a liberal society built on love and compassions for our fellow man, not some nasty place full of scared, old, white men grasping for every little bit of power they can. It’ll happen. May just be after I’m going. Here’s hoping it happens before then.
The real problem is that C++ is neither easy nor loved. Rust got an 87% approval rate in the “most loved” category of the Stack Overflow Survey. However, only 9.3% of respondents used Rust at all and only 8.8% did so professionally. C++, meanwhile, languished at 48%.
Look, I don’t want to work on some web3 thing either. Why would I use my talents as a C++ developer to work on a thing I don’t care for? Sure, you could offer me tons of cash and it would be tempting but ultimately I’d be bored to death.
I’ve worked on award winning Windows Applications and highly performant video encoding and decoding systems. I can’t see working on trading systems. Nope, nope, nope.
The U.S. military has been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days, and military and defense leaders have discussed shooting it out of the sky, according to two U.S. officials and a senior defense official.
This is really strange to me. We should bring it down, but in a controlled way if at all possible. It would be fascinating to examine what the onboard package contains.
Who knows, maybe it’s full of radioactive material in hopes we will shoot it down. That would be our luck. 😂
WESTLAKE, Ohio, January 30, 2023–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TravelCenters of America Inc. (Nasdaq: TA), the nation’s largest publicly-traded full-service travel center network, announced today an agreement with Electrify America to offer electric vehicle charging at select TA/Petro locations with the first stations planned to be deployed in 2023. Electrify America is the largest open direct current fast-charging network in the U.S.
This is excellent! There are so many nice electric vehicles on the market today so setting up a massive charging network makes sense.
The old time car companies have caught up to Space Karen’s car company and in many ways surpassed it. Good. We need the competition.
Which style is better?
SFGate: ”Twitter was sued for millions of dollars over allegations of unpaid rent at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday, Jan. 20.”
Twitter was sued for millions of dollars over allegations of unpaid rent at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday, Jan. 20.
I’m curious what folks think of the two quoting styles above? The top version is the way I quoted things for years and years, dating back to 2001.
The second is a blockquote. I’ve been doing that more recently.
Which one is better for my blog? 🤔
Miss Priss has decided she should watch The Last of Us.
Unintentionally did a 3.5mi hike today by taking the wrong fork. Ups and downs, muddy, the works.
Kolby and I are done. 😂
‘Sup
More pictures of Flynn can’t hurt, right?
We got some good family photos durning Thanksgiving.
We have Kim and I, our children, and our grand children.
Kim and I with the grandkids.
The cousins on Kim’s side of the family. It was so nice to have them all together.
Just watched this little feller run across the lawn, crawl in a drain pipe, then run over and hop on one of Kim’s barrels. Good thing she didn’t see him. It’s Chunker, the one that likes to raid her bird feeders. 🐿️
Me circa 2001, Oslo, Norway.
Flynn loves to cuddle. Tonight’s winner, my foot. 😄
Ms. Priss enjoying her best life.
That lump is Flynn. 😂
He decided Kolby’s bed was enough like a blanket that he crawled under it a few minutes ago. Goofy kitty.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning! I hope y’all are enjoying your favorite morning wakeup beverage, I know I am. My first cup of the magic elixir know the world over as coffee is sitting next to me and it’s delicious. ☕️
I’m not using my “normal” workflow this morning. Instead of using a combination of Tot and the Micro.Blog app on my iPhone I’m using the wonderful MarsEdit from my Mac. Believe it or not, it feels kind of weird to be doing it this way. But, MarsEdit is such a wonderful tool. Happy to have it. Here we go!
Iconfactory
News quickly spread on Twitter and Mastodon that a wide range of third party apps like Twitterrific, Tweetbot, Echofon, and many others had been disabled. Strangely, Twitterrific for macOS continues to work normally. We cannot say for certain why some clients are unaffected, but it seems possible that there is a new (seemingly unstated and unannounced) policy that is only being applied to apps with large numbers of users.
As of this writing Twitterrific is still blocked from connecting to Twitter. Good old Elon, Mr. Free Speech, is being spiteful and blocking third-pary apps from working. It seems it’s only the third-party apps with the biggest user base.
So far Twitter hasn’t explained why they did it. Spite, I’d imagine.
Oh, it’s worth noting that Twitterrific is the granddaddy of all Twitter clients and while working on it the word “tweet” was coined. They definitely made history. Ollie, the little bird at the right, is Twitterrific’s mascot and in many ways has become synonymous with Twitter.
I’ve been a Twitterrific user for years and years and I have enormous respect for everyone at The Iconfactory and wish them all the best. ❤️
Pitchfork
The Grammy-winning rock guitarist Jeff Beck has died, his family announced. “After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday,” the family shared in a statement. “His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.” Beck was 78 years old.
Another legend gone before his time. RIP Mr. Beck.
The Guardian
Joe Biden said the situation in Brazil was “outrageous” after supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court on Sunday, with some senior US lawmakers calling for the far-right figure to be extradited from the US.
Of course Bolsonaro took a page from the Trump Playbook of Stupidity and encouraged his supports to try to overthrow the government. The world looks to the United States for direction. TFG is a real asshole and has put democracy around the world at risk. Both men will get their just deserts someday.
Douglas Hill
In an iOS app, it’s technically fairly easy to also use code written in C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++ or JavaScript. In this article, we’ll look at how to call JavaScript code from Swift using JavaScriptCore. As an example, I’ll go through the steps of adding a JavaScript dependency to my iOS reading app to remove tracking parameters from URLs.
Really nice piece by Mr. Hill. I would love to integrate Read Later into Stream someday and it would also be wonderful to embed Readability JavaScript into Stream to make that happen. It would also help standard RSS feeds because many only include a snippet of the full article text. Having Readability support would allow Stream to parse the text of the original web page so you’d get the full article in the article view. Just one of many things I’d love to so.
Raw Story
The wife of a 2020 Iowa Republican candidate for Congress has been arrested and accused of filing 23 fraudulent votes for her husband, reports Business Insider.
If you want to know what the GOP is guilty of on a daily basis just listen to the things they scream about the most.
Seems they like to cheat at elections, among other things.
Goto 10
So I knew I wanted something different. It turns out that a new OS had been getting a big marketing push: IBM OS/2 Warp. This was v3 of OS/2 and let’s get into its history a bit.
I heard this a lot when I was part of Visio. A gentleman approached me at Windows World in Atlanta one year and said “I guarantee if you port Visio to OS/2 you’ll sell 100,000 copies right away." Apparently he worked for IBM.
We chose not to do it because the market was just too small for us to use precious resources for the port. We did have versions that ran on Classic MacOS, NT PPC, and NT Alpha, but never OS/2. The NT versions were fairly straight forward. The Mac version used a porting kit called Alar. I can’t find any references to it or I’d give y’all a link.
Bjango
In an effort to reduce the final app size of iStat Menus, we’ve been investigating ways to slim down our app icon. It’s currently about 1.4MB, which is normal for an app icon, but a decent percentage of our bundle.
Marc Edwards does a deep dive into app icon sizes and his attempt to scale back the size a bit.
Cycling News
Chris Froome has warned of the long-term effects of COVID-19, arguing that many riders are struggling for months post-infection and highlighting the potential risks to the heart.
Yes, long term COVID-19 is a real deal and it effects young, old, and even the fittest of fit professional athletes. Wear a mask and stay safe out there.
Bloomberg
Apple Inc. is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.”
I can understand folks saying it’s ergoonomically terrible to use a touch screen on a desktop computer, but occasionally tapping the screen on a laptop isn’t bad at all. I’ve seen many a person do this with their touch screen Windows laptops over the years and they don’t seem to have any sort of fatigue associated with it.
Microsoft’s Surface Pro seems like the perfect Windows device to me. It’s a tablet that can be use with a full sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and it runs Windows. I could write code on one of these devices. I can’t do that with an iPad.
Fox Sports
Sometimes, there’s a guy like Stetson Bennett IV, except that there isn’t really, not exactly like him anyway, not when this young man of unassuming excellence had to be a footballing miracle-worker just to become Georgia’s quarterback, never mind everything he’s done since.
I love me an underdog. Now, lets see if Stetson Bennett can have an NFL career. I hope so.
Also, the real Championship game was Georgia vs. Ohio State in the Peach Bowl. That was one amazing football game.
Don Melton on Mastodon
Today is the twentieth anniversary of #Apple’s #Safari Web browser being publicly introduced. That stunning debut happened at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco on January 7, 2003. And, of course , I was there. Here’s what I wrote about that event ten years ago:
Happy Birthday Safari! 🥳 All us Mac loving people owe Don “Gramps” Melton a big thanks for putting together the team that went on to create Safari. Thanks, Don!
Kolby has a rough life.
Remnants from last nights slushy snow. ❄️
Life and Sudden Cardiac Arrest
Hamlin lay on the field, motionless, for ten minutes as medical personnel administered CPR. Players from both teams kneeled, some with tears streaming down their faces, while Hamlin was placed on a stretcher and taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in an ambulance. As of Tuesday, Hamlin remains hospitalized in critical condition.
This hit home. I’ve been through this. You can read about it after I add some commentary around Mr. Hamlin’s event.
Scary is a good way to describe what happened to Damar Hamlin. You don’t expect a healthy, young, fit athlete to drop dead on a football field.
The good news is two fold. First, medical staff began working on him right away. Second, doctors have to be 99% sure what caused it. Getting hit in the chest while your heart is at a very specific point in its rhythm can cause Sudden Cardiac Arrest. It seems likely this is what happened.
It’s going to take a while but I’d expect Mr. Hamlin is going to make a full recovery and live a normal, hopefully very long, life. I’d also imagine the psychological trauma will harder to overcome than the physical trauma. Keep that in mind.
The next question is, will he play football again? That’s tough to answer and it will ultimately be between him and his doctors to decide. If it doesn’t work out that he can play again I hope he has another skill he can fall back on. No athlete can play their sport forever, especially an NFL football player. The average NFL career is around 3.3 years, give it take, so let’s be generous and say it’s four years.
It stands to reason Mr. Hamlin would eventually resign from the NFL a young man and do something else. I often wonder how many athletes consider this on their way into professional sports?
It was reported Mr. Hamlin was due to make over $800,000US this year. That should also afford him some runway should he need to change careers.
This brings me around to a little rant but I could see folks disagreeing with what I’m about to say.
From the article I link above.
But, with a few exceptions, NFL players, unlike other major sports leagues, do not have guaranteed contracts. That means the players, not the team, carry the financial risk of serious injury.
Here’s where I’m going to be controversial.
Why should contracts be guaranteed? I understand that these young men take hard shots to their bodies in every game they play. I’d imagine it’s like us being in a car wreck and walking away battered and bruised. Heck, I’d say their experience is probably worse than that in every game.
They know what they’re doing. These men decided they wanted to do this for a living, just as I decided I wanted to be a computer programmer when I was in junior high school. They must understand the risk they take with each snap. They must. Why do you think they’re paid so well? That’s right. There are very few who are good enough to make an NFL roster, much less play.
As a teenager in high school I knew football was a collision sport. I loved the collisions, which, unfortunately, I was usually on the losing side of. I saw my teammates get hurt. A few tore ACLs. I’ve seen players get concussed. Hell, I was concussed so badly I couldn’t really see and started walking to the other teams sideline. Luckily one of my teammates grabbed my jersey and took me to our sideline. I received no medical attention. I just shook it off. I watched the QB of my JV team play through a rib injury. After the game he lay on the floor of the locker room sobbing in agony. No, we were not Pro players at the highest level of performance. Just a bunch of snot nosed kids who loved football. I knew then I could be seriously injured but I still loved playing.
Many of us choose to become Professionals in business or other occupation. I’m paid a certain amount to do my job eight hours a day, five days a week. I’m a Professional Software Engineer. I’m paid to write software. NFL players are paid to play football.
I’m aging. I’ve come to realize all that punishment I put myself through as a kid is coming home to roost. Couple that with poor genetics and I feel physically broken at age 55. I have knee and back issues to contend with daily. Recently I injured my back putting on my shoe. It happened while I was off for a week to be with family after the death of my grandmother. When I got back I struggled with work and had to take some time off, some complete days, some half days. Work became concerned and it went all the way to our HR department who called to see if I wanted to take extended time off. It’s nice I have that option but at 60% of my income I cannot afford to take time off. Can you? So I’m “playing” injured, I know it’s not like the NFL but bare with me. Thankfully it’s not my brain and some time off between Christmas and New Year healed me up enough to get back to work without issue.
I do not have guaranteed income as a Professional Software Developer. Sure I have the option to go on disability for 12 weeks at 60% pay, but eventually that ends. What if I am injured so badly I need medical care my entire life? Like many other Americans I’m screwed and so is my family.
I disagree NFL players should get guaranteed contracts. I do believe the NFL Players Union could probably do a better job negotiating some guaranteed money and guaranteed healthcare, for life. Healthcare is going to, most likely, be the largest lifetime expense for many players.
I understand the punditry, players, and all us normals are talking about Mr. Hamlins injury now. It’s only natural and, after all, the young man almost died for a sport. But, let’s not forget things like this happen in the real world every day. It’s just not talked about every day on talk shows, so we are naive to it, and go about our daily lives as if everything is peachy.
My Sudden Cardiac Arrest
When I was in my Senior year of high school – at age 17 – I had Sudden Cardiac Arrest while in the on deck circle of a baseball field. We were taking batting practice.
As it’s told to me I just collapsed. I wasn’t hit in the chest with a baseball, which can cause a Sudden Cardiac Arrest, my heart just decided it wanted to stop. You don’t expect to see a young, healthy, fit 17 year old drop dead on a baseball diamond.
I was resuscitated by my best friend, Pedro. Pete, as we called him, was a hemophiliac and wasn’t allowed to participate in sports so our high school sent him to Sports Medicine training and he became a student trainer for various sports. Luckily he was on the baseball field that day. Pete was joined by Mr. Conley, a teacher, and they performed CPR on me until the ambulance arrived.
I apparently arrested again so the EMT’s worked on me for a bit then loaded me into the ambulance. Being in a small town word gets around really quickly. My family doctor heard what was going on and asked the ambulance to pick him up. He continued working on me as we drove to neighboring Visalia. I was resuscitated before arriving at Kaweah Delta Hospital.
When we arrived at the ER I arrested again and was subsequently resuscitated once more. This time my heart continued to beat on its own.
Once stabilized I was put into a medically enduced coma. When I was allowed to wake up I had no idea what had happened and I was loopy for quite a while.
Doctors tried to recreate my arrest by performing a heart catheterization, inserting some type of wire, and shocking my heart. They were trying to create an electrical malfunction. They were unable to recreate it.
No true cause was ever detected but I do have mitral valve prolapse and the best theory doctors had was my mitral valve stuck open and caused my heart to stop. Mitral valve issues can cause Sudden Cardiac Arrest.
Eventually I was released from the hospital, put on beta blockers, and went back to my life. No driving for the next six months and no sports until the doctor released me.
The most difficult part of this entire episode was dealing with the thought it could happen again, at any time. I went through bouts of depression and had to be treated for it. Eventually things returned to normal. I worked in the packing house over the summer, played hoops with my friends, and went to pool parties. Like a normal 17 year old.
A couple years later I married the love of my life, had two amazing kids, and now we have two wonderful grand kids. Overall I’ve had a wonderful life.
All that to say your life can still be quite full after a major, life threatening, event. Even if you don’t have a true cause.
Taylor’s puppers, King, is the old man of the family now. He just celebrated his 11th birthday.
Happy Birthday King! 🎂
Saturday Morning Coffee
One cup down, time for the second one and some writing. ☕️
CINCINNATI – Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin was taken off the field in an ambulance after receiving treatment on the field for over 10 minutes, which resulted in the game between the Buffalo Bills and- Cincinnati Bengals being suspended until further notice Monday night.
I have a lot of thoughts on this matter having been through it myself, at the age of 17.
Was it a tragic accident? Yes. Is it the end of the world for Mr. Hamlin? No, definitely not. Is it scary? Oh, yes, it most certainly is.
Today, Jan 4th, marks the official start of our next chapter as WillowTree, a TELUS International Company.
So, yeah, we are now a part of TELUS International.
What do I expect? Bigger engagements over the next year with bigger brands. I see it as a huge positive.
Realistically, only time will tell, but I’m feeling really good about it. 👍🏼
[Tech Dirt](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/04/journalists in-and-others-should-leave-twitter-heres-how-they-can-get-started/)
Near the end of 2022, Elon Musk issued an edict to the journalism community. Obey me, he said, or you will be banned from posting on Twitter.
I’ve been reducing my use of Twitter each and every day for a while. I’m down to checking it once or twice a day because there are folks there I haven’t found on Mastodon.
Mastodon has definitely become by new social network home. You can search me out using @fahrni@curmudgeon.cafe or go directly to curmudgeon.cafe/@fahrni. I’d love to connect on Mastodon. 😃
In the past year, there’s been a sharp uptick in anti-LGBTQ incidents around the country. One group estimates that there’s been a 12-fold increase in demonstrations and political violence targeted at the queer community, just since 2000.
Love is love. LGBTQ+ rights are HUMAN RIGHTS! Look, if on the basis of religious beliefs you don’t agree with LGBTQ+ folks, fine. But they’re human beings who deserve to be treated as you would anyone else. Yes, it’s that simple, and it is a choice.
Let’s put it in Christiany terms. WWJD? Do you think Jesus would’ve shown nothing but hate and contempt for the LGBTQ+ community? I think not. He would have shown them kindness, compassion, and above all else, love. ❤️
Another BASIC game I made back in the 80s was one that I actually designed with one of my younger sisters. She had expressed interest in all this “computer stuff” I was doing and wanted to know what it would take to make a game.
I’ve been following Paul’s site for a while and it’s a lot of fun. If, like me, you have a place in your heart for the BASIC programming language, subscribe to Goto 10 and enjoy.
It’s 2023, and Windows 11 is finally a mature operating system that most people would be happy to use. Sun Valley has finally arrived, and it’s all about a long overdue reinvestment in design under Panos Panay’s leadership. But is it enough? Let’s take a look.
TL;DR - Windows needs more work to bring everything up to a modern look and feel.
The author goes on to identify nine distinct UI styles, that’s right nine. Talk about technical debt.
From a code design perspective would it be better to go through all those UI frameworks and make them use WinUI 3 or would it be better to touch each individual application to update their UI?
I have been of the opinion you’d hit a wider range of apps if you updated the frameworks to use WinUI 3.
I’ve even written about it. I did get some great feedback that from that piece that basically said the design models are too different to make the Win32 API wrap Win3 UI. I can accept that. But, if it could be pulled off, an entire class of applications would look modern without their authors modifying them.
Perhaps a compromised approach would be to make some of the newer UI Frameworks use Win3 UI and rewrite the UI for old Win32 API apps? 🤔
When the employees announced they were unionizing, Microsoft vowed to remain neutral and let the employees make their own decision about joining, CWA said.
This sounds really great but the skeptic in me wonders how much Microsoft will allow this to happen in others areas of the organization?
Gaming is full of nightmarish stories of long hours and, even worse, abuse.
I’m hopeful this new union will address both of those and make for better work conditions. 👍🏼
While I’m always excited to see what innovations companies like Apple have in store, I have some serious concerns about betting on AR/VR glasses as a growth market.
For quite a while now I’ve had zero interest in AR/VR technologies. In my opinion AR could be useful in many industries as long as the tech is as easy to wear as a pair of glasses. I could see them being useful to mechanics, electricians, builders, and various trades I’m not thinking about. Otherwise they’re just expensive toys.
I thought Apple Watch Apps would flourish. They have for some developers but they’re mainly little views into data from your iPhone. That’s not bad, it’s just the way they are.
Hey, all I’d like to see is custom watch faces. That’s it. Then, perhaps, someone could create a watch face that looks like Dumbledore’s watch. Kim bought me the Fossil collectible one year for Christmas. 😃
Flynn is one happy kitty.
He finds my lap every night. Now I can’t move. 😃
That’s how Flynn rolls. Sleep wherever, whenever.
