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.
Time for Ms. Priss to get high.
I just watched her dig her catnip toy out of the pile of dog and cat toys. It’s fun to watch her go crazy, rubbing it all over her face and roll around.
What’s that?
Flynn heard something outside.
Saturday Morning Coffee
It’s grey outside this morning, low fog, and we expect rain later in the morning that should go until midnight tonight. My what a difference a week makes. Last week at this time is was 8 Fahrenheit outside, this week 49 Fahrenheit at 8AM. Weird.
My first cup is steaming on the table next to me. It’s delicious. ☕️
WASHINGTON — A federal judge indicated Wednesday that then-President Donald Trump’s remarks on Jan. 6 telling a crowd to “fight like hell” before the Capitol attack could have signaled to his supporters that he wanted them “to do something more” than just protest.
It seems obvious to all of us TFG riled up his supporters and sent them marching to the Capitol to overthrow the will of the people. Of course he’s likely to get away with it, run for President, win again, and never leave office. Thus destroying our democracy.
I hate being so negative but I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe justice will eventually come home to roost for TFG.
Thanks to my instance admins, though, seeing the red no alt badge is a simple way for me to know not to boost that post. Conversely, an alt badge gives me the green light to boost, knowing the author has taken the time to describe the image.
My friend, Ashur, on why it’s important to add alt text to images in your Mastodon posts. It’s all about accessibility.
Historically, Apple released at least one new Mac model every year in the fourth quarter that runs between October and December, starting in 2001 with the launch of the iBook G3. This means that there has been a new Mac toward the end of the year for the entire lifespan of product lines including the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
While I still love me some Apple devices I don’t really pay much attention to what’s happening with Apple releases. Most of the end of the year Apple enthusiast angst is around their promise to convert the entire Mac line to use Apple Silicon. They didn’t make it.
Meanwhile I’m plugging along on my 2019 MacBook Pro and it’s a perfectly great computer. Yes, even for writing code.
We spend so much time drilling algorithmic complexity. Big-O and all that. But performance is so often about contention and memory, especially when working in parallel.
I see Rob Napier’s name all over Stack Overflow when I have a question about iOS or Mac Programming. This little piece walks through his process to optimize some code. I love these types of posts.
I tried the “Full Self-Driving (Beta)” on a Model Y in Toronto. It was terrifying.
I don’t want a full self driving car and I have zero confidence in Tesla ever creating a good one, much less a perfect one. Musk is delusional and rapidly slipping into insanity after his purchase of Twitter. More on that later.
Don’t waste your money on a Tesla, there are lots of really great EV’s on the market now.
After a heavy winter storm hit southern Ontario and parts of Quebec around December 25th, one lucky home could keep the lights on via the power from a Ford Lightning.
Speaking a a great EV! How cool is it to have the ability to power your home when the power goes out? I’d like to have that ability. I mean prices start at less than $40,000.00! 😳 Who can afford these things? I can’t. 😕
Controversial US congressional candidate George Santos has finally filed his Personal Financial Disclosure Report on September 6th - 20 months late - and he is claiming an inexplicable rise in his alleged net worth to $11 million..
This Santos guy is a real piece of work, just like TFG. He’s nothing more than a grifter and he’s going to be a Representative for New York’s 3rd congressional district. Hogwash, I say. He should be expelled for lying and we need a better systems in place to vet any candidate before they’re allowed to run for office.
A lot of people have been asking for an explainer on what is going on with Southwest Airlines and the massive meltdown that has occurred.
This whole Southwest thing is a real mess. It sounds like they need to invest heavily in their digital infrastructure. I know a company full of great folks who could help fix it.
Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony. However, eating too much pie is okay because the sin of pi is always zero.
Lovely, geeky, dad joke. I had to share it.
Building the tiny house, setting up the garden and food forest during the first summer. Then, of course, learning about living in the tiny house during winter and what that means for keeping warm and keeping things working.
This is a really great series of posts! Our youngest daughter is taken with the idea of living in a tiny home. Guess I should pass this series of articles on to her? 🤔
But, like anyone I suppose, I have darker moods from time to time; and I often find that I’m reluctant to post those thoughts at the marmot. They’re not strictly political, though politics has a role in why they exist.
I love reading Dave’s work. He’s a very thoughtful man and shares wonderful stories about life, tech, and photography. This post is out of the norm for him but I understand exactly where he’s coming from. I have these thoughts myself and I often wonder how many folks share them with me.
You’re not alone, my friend. ❤️
One of the reasons I chose Twitter for identity for my apps, a decision made in 2014, is that I hoped that a developer community would grow up around Twitter. I hoped that Twitter would take a chance on co-promoting products. It could still happen, but it seems unlikely now.
With Twitter imploding there’s a decent chance Dave will have to swap out his identity system. As nice as it would be to not have to do it, it seems somewhat inevitable unless Musk can turn things around at Twitter.
Time for my third and final cup of coffee. See y’all next week. ☕️
Brother(Flynn) and Sister(Priss) chillin.
Delusions of Grandeur
In my dreams last night I was back in Exeter. My brain likes to run home on occasion and I’ve been thinking about it all morning.
We love our little town. I loved the home we’d purchased there and we’d made some really nice improvements to it in the four years we were there. We had a nice detached garage we converted into a living space our oldest daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter lived in for a while. When they moved on, Taylor, our youngest daughter took it over. The idea was to turn it into Kim’s She Shed when Taylor moved out. As it turns out that never happened because we moved east to Virginia.
I grew up in Exeter from sixth grade on. I graduated high school in Exeter. Kim and I were married in Exeter in 1987. Aside from a brief stint in Seattle we raised two children there and got to see our first grandchild begin life there.
In all honesty I’d like to move back. There, I said the quiet part out loud. ☺️
If we moved back I could remain at WillowTree because I’m in our Work from Anywhere group. Knowing I could do that makes me smile because I really do enjoy my work and the people at WillowTree. My sincerest hope is to retire from WillowTree when I hit 70. Hopefully they’ll allow me to stay that long.
I miss a lot of things about the San Joaquin Valley and Exeter in general. Silly things like Exeter Coffee Company where socializing is encouraged and I took advantage of that. I miss Kirkman’s VIP Pizza. We got pizza there every Saturday night, Kim indulged me that. I miss Frosty King, a local Mom and Pop burger joint that did everything just right.
Mostly I miss family and the people of our little town. Our neighborhood was wonderful and we had great neighbors we could share with or just shoot the breeze with while out mowing lawns.
I’d always dreamed of running a little hyper local news site – blog – that filled gaps left open by our local paper, the Sun Gazette (who are doing amazing local journalism.)
My dreams of being an Indie Developer have been a constant and I’d always imagined owning a certain building in Exeter and making our home and my Indie Software there. The building I’d still love to have is the old Exeter Bank of America building, complete with a nifty old vault! The building is a beautiful two story affair that had received a lot of love in recent times but the second floor was never converted. I always imagined the second floor as our home an my little Indie office.
I think it’s safe to say I’m more than a little delusional. But those hopes and dreams keep me going when I get down. For some strange reason I still believe a lot of this will magically happen some day.
If it never does, that’s fine. I’ve had an extremely wonderful life, filled with great joy, friends, and family I love to be around. As I’ve aged those friend and family connections have become more important to me than any house or town, but I still dream of Exeter.
Bye Ms. Khloe
We lost Ms. Khloe a couple days back. She’d been battling a thyroid problem for a few years now and her body reached a point where she couldn’t go any longer.
Her persist “grumpy old lady” vibe will be missed as well as her persistent meowing to be fed anytime you went into the kitchen. She lived a good long 19 years.
A Hero in Buffalo
TRUE ANGEL IN BUFFALO 💯 A THREAD: A local woman received a call on Christmas Eve, “Hi, you don't know me but I have your brother.” The woman’s brother’s name is Joey. He is 64 years old and mentally disabled. pic.twitter.com/iAVQTsf2xH
— Kimberly LaRussa (@KimberlyLaRussa) December 26, 2022
Sha’Kyra Aughtry, you and your family are heroes. Everyone who helped this poor man are heroes. This is an example of true love and compassion for your fellow man.
That is what Jesus called for.
Nothing like the stunt pulled by Texas Governor, Greg Abbott.
We need more kindness, compassion, empathy, sympathy, and love.
I’m happy to see it still exists in the world.
Developing in SwiftUI
I’ve decided I’m going to work on revamping Arrgly starting tomorrow. It’s going to get a new name, Squish (I think), and the UI is going to be 100% SwiftUI (worst name ever) because I need to learn SwiftUI and Arrgly has always been my playground app.
Once I’ve completed it I’m going to start working on Stream for Mac in SwiftUI and see if I can complete it before the end of 2023. 🤞🏼
Wish me luck. 🍀
The GOP is all about cruelity
Multiple busloads of migrants were dropped off at Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington, D.C. on Saturday — Christmas Eve — leaving migrants on the streets in below-freezing temperatures, according to multiple reports.
Of course Greg Abbott was responsible for this cruel, cruel, act.
Jesus was pretty well known for stranding poor children outside in freezing weather as a hilarious joke to make fun of his enemies. https://t.co/IJOcbYouy6
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 26, 2022
Anyone who claims to be Christian and behaves this way is clearly not a Christian.
A simple piece of scripture for those who love to quote it to people.
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” - Matthew 25:40
Don’t look to the GOP for servants. They only serve themselves; power hungry, money grubbing, hate mongers.
“Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!” - Peter Venkman
That’s Kolby in the foreground and that black spot in the background is our old girl Khloe partially covered by a blanket.
These two know how to live.
My family gets me. 🎄
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning! It’s Christmas Eve – for those who celebrate!
Look, I’m a native California boy. It’s mostly sunshine and warm weather year round. Sure we’d get down in the high 20s overnight on rare occasion, but nothing like we’ve experienced in Virginia this week. It’s been pretty darned frigid. The temperature at the moment is a balmy 8 degrees outside, with a feels like of -7. That’s just wild!
Anywho, first cup of coffee is in the mug. Time to compose the post. ☕️
Many people using PCalc on their shiny devices today don’t realise that the app has been around for a lot longer than they think. In some cases, a lot longer than they’ve been thinking.
Happy Birthday PCalc! 🎂
It’s impressive to have an active 30 year run with a piece of software. Congratulations on 30 years and counting James Thomson!
By now, you probably know where this is going: yes, I wrote my own utility and call it SimBuddy. It’s a FREE download from the Iconfactory.
Craig Hockenberry is a long time Mac and iOS Developer. He’s best known as the creator of the first Twitter client, Twitterrific, but he’s also developed many fun and useful apps for the Iconfactory.
If Apple gave out lifetime achievement awards, Craig would be deserving of one.
Thanks for another great development tool, Craig!
Well, yes. They did. They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.
This is an oldie-but-goodie. The Joel on Software piece above is from 2000 and touches on something that can destroy a company quicker than anything: rewriting software.
The article was brought up somewhere this week because Musk is reportedly looking to rewrite Twitter.
I mean, dang, dude! Maybe try to understand how all the things work together before jumping to that conclusion. A lot of cool stuff was happening before you blew the place up.
Randomly thinking back to my time at Apple.
— @taquitos@macaw.social the new Taquitos (@taquitos) December 5, 2022
In 2013 when the iOS side of iTunes U, Podcasts, App Store, and Remote were owned by a team of 7 engineers. Each app source in a different source control.
I was lead for iTunes U. I was told a few things by my new manager
1) Don't ...
I’ve been trying to stay away from linking to Twitter but I couldn’t resist this tweet because it captures something a lot of modern devs should hear.
Basically the tweet thread goes on to explain how broken Apple’s development process was broken on a particular team.
I’m not saying alternate forms of development are necessarily bad but grinding devs into the ground is not good, at all. People need time to live, and sleep.
It’s not just Tesla investors who are at their wit’s end with CEO Elon Musk, who has been making a huge mess of his Twitter takeover.
Ah, yes, The Musk Effect. He’s dragging Tesla down with Twitter and I’m shocked the Tesla Board hasn’t fired him.
But, really, after all this, I cannot fathom how anyone can possibly get all that excited about joining yet another centralized social media site. Perhaps I’m biased (note: I am biased) because it was my frustration with the problems of these big, centralized social media services that made me write my Protocols, Not Platforms paper a few years ago. But, after all of that, the big question that kept coming up about it was “sure, but how would you get anyone to actually use it.”
Here’s to the Open Web making a comeback! We now have Mastodon and Micro.blog to fill our Twitter mojo and both run on open standards like ActivityPub and RSS.
A friend asked what I think will happen to Twitter. Here’s my assessment
Nice little Mastodon thread from Dare sharing his thoughts on the Twitter mess.
You’d like to have time to code, but nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone’s going roughly in the same direction.
This piece from Denice is required reading for any Software Developer. It explores the position know as Staff Engineer or Principle Engineer in many companies today.
At WillowTree was have a dual track for Software Developers after the Senior level; Staff Engineer or Associate Engineering Director.
I personally reached a point where I decided it was time to change direction and focus on building teams instead of coding, so I became an Associate Engineering Director.
It is interesting to note the Staff and Director positions overlap in significant ways but also have very unique traits. The Director position is a people management and team building position, the Staff position does deep dives into technology and can master just about anything.
Anywho, go read Denise’s piece, it’s very good.
Like in the past years, I will try to answer a couple of questions: How many binaries are in iOS 16? Which programming languages are used to develop these apps? How many apps are written with Swift? What is the percentage of apps using SwiftUI versus UIKit?
I had to share this because I too find it interesting to know how much Apple is eating their own dog food when it comes to their developer technologies.
Swift seems to be making real inroads and SwiftUI (worst name ever) is starting to show itself.
I’ve been thinking about doing Stream for Mac with SwiftUI. It is the future of development on the Mac and iOS. All devs need to learn it at some point.
Newsrooms should not spin up instances for their reporters partially because this is too new to dedicate strapped staff to
I’ve been pushing the idea of news companies spinning up their own Mastodon servers. Dan does make a good point about not doing that. If Mastodon could be enhanced to export all posts to another instance I have a feeling Dan wouldn’t be as opposed to the idea. As it stands you can move instances but it only keeps your followers, you lose your posts. That’s no bueno.
We want the field of journalism to take ownership of the ways stories are distributed and audiences are engaged.
With the most recent flight of users from Twitter Mr. Davidson spun up an instance of Mastodon for journalists. That was a brilliant idea and provides a bit of distance from the journalist to their organization. It’s a great alternative to news orgs spinning up their own.
There has never been any mystery about what happened on January 6, 2021. As Senator Mitch McConnell said at Trump’s second impeachment trial, “There’s no question—none—that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
In many ways I’ve lost confidence in our Justice system because it treats the rich, politicians, and white people differently than everyone else. Combine more than one of those traits and you’re likely to walk away unscathed where someone who works at the coffee shop, is poor, and dark skinned is totally screwed.
It’s not right. TFG must be brought to Justice. Our system requires it if our democracy is to survive.
How to have a good internet experience in 8 easy steps
I usually avoid posts that include “steps” or “X reasons” because they’re usually really bad click bait type articles. This one isn’t. Go check it out.
I’ve never been in weather like this, that’s why I’m posting so much.
It’s wild!
