Rob Fahrni

Some of our fall flowers. 🌼 I’m surprised the rose is still blooming.

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. 😃

My dreams always include one of the places I love; Seattle, Exeter, or Lindsay.

Lately, instead of dreaming of my time at Visio in Seattle I’ve been dreaming about returning to Microsoft. Did that last night.

Brains are weird. 🧠

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. 👻

Abhorrent.

And yet, I’m not surprised at all. When ads become more algorithmic, people find fraudulent ways to cheat and make more money.

The endgame: algorithmic podcast ads, which already degrade the listener experience, get further devalued and the entire industry loses. https://t.co/iCFv7fbP14

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) September 29, 2022

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.

The digital protest art being created in Iran--much of it anonymously--has been absolutely brilliant. pic.twitter.com/Q1MCJAhYxg

— Dr. Shiva Balaghi (@SBalaghi) September 30, 2022

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. ☕️

One of my favorite flags. My wife has at least one for every month of the year. For fall and Christmas she has so many we could swap them every few days.

That kitty looks happy. 🎃🐈‍⬛

I think of Home Alone as a Christmas movie. Not a only watch in December movie, but a Christmas movie nonetheless. I like watching it on Thanksgiving night. 🦃

Anywho, all that to say, it on now and I’m watching it.

Oh, and I want that house. 😃

I got a nice little treat with my coffee this morning. Kim made some pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls. 🤤

Pastries and coffee are perfect together.

Robin Rendle, hat tip Om 🎩: ”There are no rules to blogging except this one: always self-host your website because your URL, your own private domain, is the most valuable thing you can own. Your career will thank you for it later and no-one can take it away. But don’t wait up for success to come, it’s going to be a slog—there will be years before you see any benefit.”

If you’re reading this you have to know by now I love blogging. I don’t see giving it up. Sure, I’ve gone through extremely dry spells over the years but I still enjoy it.

In the early 2000’s I’d do little one line posts and it was fine. When Twitter became a thing I felt like my blog posts needed a title for some strange reason. When I switched back to this domain for my blog I started posting stand-alone short posts without a title and pictures.

I like the way it’s going. I post more frequently.

The Daily Beast: ”Dearie, a semi-retired federal judge in Brooklyn who’s playing the role of temporary referee, wants to speed up the process and get federal agents back on track. And while Trump has been alleging on social media that he already declassified the records he swiped from the White House, Dearie is demanding that Trump put up or shut up.”

The judge that setup this whole mess by allowing for a Special Master was just passing the buck. It’s nice to see Judge Dearie call B.S.

It’s amazing how big a grifter, gangster, bully, TFG is. He really does deserve some jail time, of course he won’t get any, but he deserves some.

The Iconfactory : ”Introducing Wallaroo - the quickest and easiest way to browse and set wallpapers on your iOS devices. The Iconfactory has been crafting custom wallpapers for the Mac and iOS community for over 25 years, and now we’ve packaged them up in a fun, handy app that’s available today on the iOS App Store.”

I’m a huge fan of The Iconfactory. I’ve been a Twitterrific user for years and years and years and I’m composing this post using Tot, their simple note taking app.

When I saw the post for Wallaroo I installed it straight away and subscribed. I love seeing a subscription that is going to provide me with high quality iPhone wallpapers for the length of my subscription, one year.

I’m currently rocking the Jack-O-Lantern from the Spectral Selfies collection. It’s a beautiful piece of work.

Highly recommended.

I’ve been surprised Apple is approving implementations like in Apollo (Reddit app) and that ping pong game that uses the Island. Completely different strategy to past rejections for misusing standard iPhone elements. Not a bad thing though as of now. https://t.co/fy3dyrYDtL

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) September 22, 2022

I was also surprised to see Apple relax the rules around the Dynamic Island (Do you say Dynamic Island in a big booming voice in your head or is it just me?)

Regardless. It’s nice to see Apple allow for this whimsical treatment of the island.

Who know, next week they may reject it? 🤷🏻‍♂️

The Washington Post: ”The issue Wednesday went far beyond a single statue. Residents — neighbors, families — plunged into an emotional discussion about identity and who gets to define it, provoking a heated defense of local heritage. Much of it was couched in an unreconstructed view of history in which the Lost Cause is noble, the Confederacy was a bastion of states’ rights and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was an unprincipled butcher.”

This is something I really hate about the South. There is a reality distortion field around this so called heritage. Yeah, it’s a heritage of slavery. The imprisonment and mistreatment of human beings to serve your needs. It’s pathetic.

Every one of these Jim Crowe era statues and monuments need to be destroyed. Melt them down and make them something beautiful or put them in a museum to shame them. It would be a museum similar to the Holocaust Museum. We can’t forget the Civil War and we need to tell it for what it was. It was all about slavery.

The Confederacy was a disgusting attempt to overthrow the government. It’s a stain on our history.

Liberals: “The real fear on the right is that white people will become the minority, and the democratic process will remove them from power, so they want to end democracy to preserve white supremacy”

Conservatives: “That’s paranoid crazy talk, you haters”

Also conservatives: https://t.co/OQsp8bNFbv

— Chris Espinosa (@cdespinosa) September 23, 2022

Gotta give this asshole props for being honest enough to say what these right wing extremists believe. Most of the MAGA’s dance around the subject. Not this dude. He comes right out and says “I’m a racist bastard.”

Disgusting.

ESPN: ”CLEVELAND – Nobody, at least still living, knows for sure how Brownie the Elf came to be the first official mascot of the Cleveland Browns some 76 years ago.”

Let’s end on a happy note, shall we?

I know Brownie the Elf is controversial in Cleveland and around the country but gosh darnit I’m here for it! Not every NFL team needs some macho mascot.

I hope the dress him up for the holidays. A Christmas elf would be nice.

Oh, I also really love that he covers a gigantor part of the field. Nicely done Cleveland.

Now, let’s get him on the helmets. 😁

I love that I can hop into Stream, tap an article from the list to read, read it, and then tap the share icon in the upper right corner of the screen to save the article to Pocket for possible inclusion in my Saturday Morning Coffee post.

I love it when a plan comes together. 😎

The NFL should allow QBs to wear any number jersey they’d like. Could you imagine a quarterback wearing number 99? 😂

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

It’s quiet. The puppies and kitties have all been fed, my coffee has finished brewing and its in my mug cooling a bit.

The week started terribly. I managed to pick up some kind of stomach bug. At first I thought it was food poisoning, but Kim got it as well and she didn’t have any of the food I thought cause the problem. I haven’t tossed my cookies in years and years. 🤮

The end of the week is not shaping up great. I’m leaning against a heating pad as I write because my creaky back is threatening to go on strike. Can’t let that happen.

Oh, the knee you ask? It’s doing really well! 👍🏼

Time to drop some links and my terrible take on them.

Hope you enjoy your coffee and the post. ☕️

Sketch: “Here at Sketch, we’re super proud to be an independent design tool — just as we’ve been for the last 12 years. And in those years, we’ve seen a lot of change in the industry — and more design trends than you can shake a realistically-rendered leather icon at.”

The big tech news this week was Adobe’s acquisition of Figma for $20 billion big ones! Wowzer! That’s a lot of greenbacks.

So, why the link to Sketch? Well, there’s usually a split between folks over what this means for the acquired product. Some instantly start looking for a replacement, others are happy with the idea.

If you’re now in the market for a replacement product you should consider Sketch. It’s a beautifully designed, full featured, native Mac App. That’s right, it’s native. That means better performance and better use of system resources. Bottom line? It’s not a system hog and it gives you everything you need for great collaborative design.

Figma: “Today, we’re announcing that Figma has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Adobe. This has been in the works over the past few months and I’m so excited to finally share this news with the world.”

What I know about Figma × Adobe:

Figma ded?
Adobe is committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously.

We build:
We want to make Figma, FigJam & Community platform even better, including, Friends of Figma.

Price?
No plans to change pricing — free plans, pricing, free edu.

— ˗ˏˋrogieˎˊ (@rogie) September 15, 2022

Seattle Times: “WILKESON, Pierce County — The doorknob at The Carlson Block is a little tricky in that it only opens if you turn it a certain way. This causes first-time customers to step a little to the left and peer in the full-length window to ensure that this wood-fired pizzeria in the middle of nowhere isn’t just a figment of the imagination.”

I love pizza. There, I said it. I know I could eat it every day and never grow tired of it. In fact I did it two weeks back because our local pizza joint said they burned our pizza so they made us another and offered us the “burnt” one. It was perfectly fine. 🤤

Anyway, I have to add this one to the list of places to eat that we’ll never actually get around to doing. 😂

The Verge: “We’ve got a whole new Verge for you today. Radically new. Sometimes you just have to blow things up and start over.”

I like the new design.

Working on improved onboarding instructions for ⁦@CaptionistaApp⁩ — challenging because it’s very simple to use but actions combine functionality people may not intuit. Getting close I think?

H/T as ever to ⁦[@viticci](https://micro.blog/viticci)⁩ for the 🤯 Apple Frames shortcut pic.twitter.com/BuTH31uJxV

— Marc Palmer (@marcpalmerdev) September 15, 2022

Marc is a friend, amazing software developer, and all around good man. Please, check out his app, Captionista.

He spent a lot of time building a beautiful, darned useful, application for placing captions on video. I’d love to see him be wildly successful.

Daily Mail: “Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman bragged of receiving classified US intelligence from Jared Kushner and using it as part of a purge of ‘corrupt’ princes and businessmen, DailyMail.com can disclose.”

But of course Jared sold MBS secrets. Wonder how many TFG did?

puck.news: “It can be hard to know what to make of Apple TV+, the ambitious, high-gloss film-and-television streaming arm of a nearly $3 trillion consumer technology giant. Apple is both the largest company on earth and has positioned itself as an eventual HBO rival, partnering with Richard Plepler and churning out prestige series like Severance, The Morning Show, and Ted Lasso, which won four Emmys last night. Last year, Apple was the first streamer to win Best Picture, for CODA, beating Netflix to the punch.”

I personally watch a ton of shows on HBO Max, it’s definitely my favorite of the streaming services, but Apple has some great shows. Severance was amazing and so was Slow Horses, oh, and I’ve loved what I’ve seen of Ted Lasso.

When I say I prefer HBO Max that could change in a heartbeat if another streaming service started offering content as broad and rich as HBO. They just have the better catalog.

Oh, and is The Mosquito Coast coming back?

Robert Reich: “Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened that if he is indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be ‘problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,’ adding ‘I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.’”

If this lawless man isn’t indicted what do you think is going to happen? Nothing?

There will be rioting in the streets and a corrupt man will become President and end the longest lasting Democracy the world has ever known.

Indict him.

👋 Hey Twitter

My current employment contract wraps up at the end of the month.

Would any of you know of any Mac admin-y type roles out there (remote preferred, but I can head into NYC if need be)?

— macfixer 🇺🇸 🤝 🇺🇦 (@macfixer) September 15, 2022

Kyle is a Mac expert and admin. He can help you manage your entire fleet of Macintosh computers.

It’s been just over six weeks since my knee replacement. Therapy continues and I’m surprised how quickly the human body can heal and adjust itself to changes. We’re so fragile, yet so amazingly strong all at the same time.

I’ve recently started walking without my cane. I probably could’ve done it earlier but there’s a bit of a psychological barrier to get through. Can I trust this knee to properly support me and can I do it without pain?

Anyone who suffers chronic pain will tell you they’d do anything to stop it. My brother once told me “If chopping off my arm would stop my back pain I’d do it.” Yes, it can be that difficult to live with. Luckily surgery did the trick for him as it did for me.

My knee feels great. Sure I get the occasional weird nerve twinge and the entire knee area is still kind of sore but that’s nothing, just part of the healing process. The joint itself, the thing that rated eight on the pain scale, is now a big fat goose egg, a zero. That is beyond my wildest expectations. ❤️

Random knee picture six weeks on.

NPR: “That decades-long reign of service ended Thursday, when Queen Elizabeth II died at her Balmoral estate in Scotland, at age 96.”

RIP.

Six Colors: “Then there’s the Dynamic Island, a stark reminder about the limits of rumors emerging from Apple’s hardware supply chain. Everyone who reported on the size and shape of the new cutouts on the iPhone 14 Pro models was absolutely right—and yet couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The cutouts were only the start of the story.”

I was only able to see a small portion of the event but it happened to be the new iPhone introduction.

They’re not too different, with one extremely cool exception. The notch has become a smaller cutout at the top of the phone and that allowed Apple to blend it into user experience. It’s called Dynamic Island and I’m trying to find an excuse to use it in my apps. 😁

Robert Reich: “I have a serious question for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind?”

I ask this question all the time and I think it’s because some of them actually believe it. Others are just so hungry for power and destroying our democracy they’ll do anything to make it happen.

They’re part of a cult.

LAist: “Despite calls to conserve power, California’s energy demands were at an all-time high Tuesday.”

California is a beautiful state, arguably the best state in the nation. It has a powerhouse economy, it’s the home of tech, it has beautiful cities, mountains, beaches, you name it, California’s got it.

But it also has big problems to go along with the rest. Fires rage out of control every summer, water is hard to come by, and with our new climate reality extreme heat puts huge strain on the power grid.

I miss California but I don’t miss these problems. 🧡

I love how Spotify calls their locked-up "podcast" platform "https://t.co/G4bfRixW8a" -- it's the way Machiavelli would do it. If you're closed, say you're open -- and let everyone debate whether you're scum or just an opportunist.

— Dave Winer (@davewiner) September 3, 2022

A lot of us believe folks like Spotify, with proprietary systems, should give their podcast like audio a different name. They’re clearly not open, don’t have an RSS feed, so they’re not podcasts.

Fast Company: “The overarching issue here is that Mastodon is trying to be too much like Twitter when it really ought to be more like Reddit.”

This is an interesting take but I don’t see it. Mastodon is a great Twitter like experience and I love having my own instance.

I’d love to see Twitter’s Bluesky effort bring federation to the system so systems like Mastodon could join it. 🤞🏼

The Washington Post: “The insurrectionists of Jan. 6 busted into the Capitol, hit police with fire extinguishers, flagpoles, bats, stun guns and pepper spray; they threatened to kill the vice president and tried to overthrow the 2020 election. And now, they want an apology.”

Each and every one of the insurrectionists needs to pay a price. They tried to overthrow the will of the people. That includes Donald J. Trump. At a minimum he should be banned from holding any state or federal office. He also deserves some jail time. Regardless, he’s a horrible person.

Rukshan: “RSS is a great piece of technology that people who use the internet today are unaware of or not using. There has not been any significant development in RSS for the last 10 years, and that’s fine.”

This is a nice little piece on RSS, one persons journey back to it, and how it makes consuming articles better.

If you need an iOS Feed Reader, give my app Stream a try. It’s completely free to use and offers a tip system if you find it useful. Yes, shameless self promotion. 😃

Teen Vogue: “By that summer, Starbucks, a multibillion-dollar company, was reporting record-breaking sales, while many of us couldn’t afford to pay rent and buy groceries in the same week. It was at this point we realized we needed to take things into our own hands if we wanted anything to change.”

When I can’t find a good local coffee shop I’ll seek out a Starbucks. I wouldn’t classify it as the best coffee I’ve ever had but it’s good and satisfies. I think of them as the McDonalds of coffee, you know you’ll get a consistent cup.

Anywho, they’ve been real jerks to their workers over the course of the pandemic, as have many other places.

As a place known for great benefits prior to the pandemic it would be really nice if they could reevaluate everything they do and make Starbucks the best place in the country to work. If you want to stop unions, take excellent care of your partners.

Barn Finds: “Dodge released its B-Series range of commercial vehicles in 1948, and our feature Pickup is from the first year of production.”

It never fails to amaze me how many beautiful old cars and trucks are sitting in barns or fields rotting away. It also makes me wish I had tons of money to spend. I would become a collector. A collector and restorer of old, beautiful, cars and trucks.

I love Barn Finds.

I have Bipolar II Disorder.

So what is it? Well it’s a mental disorder that causes my brain to bounce between highs and lows.

”However, in bipolar II disorder, the “up” moods never reach full-blown mania. The less-intense elevated moods in bipolar II disorder are called hypomanic episodes, or hypomania.” - WebMD

I can’t pinpoint when it started for me. I suspect it began after I had sudden death in 1985 at the ripe old age of 17. That was a very stressful time for me and I was treated for depression for a while after I left the hospital.

For years and years I would become depressed and not want to be around people and question why I was alive. I couldn’t bring myself to self terminate, due to my Christian upbringing that said it was a mortal sin, a sin that sent you straight to hell, but I sure wanted to have a crash and die or wish that someone would come along and kill me. I would isolate. I could not stand being around other people. Everything was negative.

Then, I’d get happy. So amazingly happy. I could do anything and do it really well — at least that’s what my brain told me. 😃

Those moments were great. I still enjoy them to this day but I know what’s happening. By knowing what’s happening I can curb my enthusiasm a little bit. Not be so loud and in your face about things. That’s helpful for my wife especially. She’s lived long enough with me bouncing off the walls. 😄

For the longest time I would try to figure out why I felt so good at times. Was it my diet? Was it the amount of sleep I got? Was it a combination of the two? It was extremely frustrating because I could never figure it out.

Thankfully at the age of 50 my doctor figured it out and sent me to see a psychiatrist who confirmed her diagnosis; Bipolar II Disorder.

At that time I was put on meds for my depression. We tried one that didn’t work but the second choice worked like a charm. I get down once in a while, but everyone does, the difference is I don’t believe I’m useless and I don’t want to be dead. I just get a little blue.

It’s nice not falling into that deep dark abyss any longer.

Some folks may think I’m sharing too much. I don’t. I’m not embarrassed by it. It’s a health condition like many others. I can’t help it but it’s treatable. In fact having folks know I have this condition can help them understand what may be going on with me at times. If I’m bouncing off the walls, taking at 5000MPH, and generally way over the top, I’m probably in a hypomanic episode. I love them, but they can be annoying for others.

Anywho, there it is. I’m not crazy or insane and I’m not a danger to others. My brain just does some strange stuff on occasion.

I have Bipolar II Disorder.

What kitty? I don’t see a kitty.

If Flynn wants to cuddle and you don’t want to — normally I’m cool with it but I’m guarding the knee — just throw a blanket over him and he’s happy as can be.

Gotta understand your kids and their needs. 😁

Harrison Co.: ”If the point of a compass was centered on Fresno, California, and a 100-mile radius was drawn, the circle formed would reach across the most vital and productive growing region in the world. Although this 100 Mile Circle covers less than 1% of the total land mass of the U.S., it produces nearly one-half of its fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts – more than 250 different crops rich in the vitamins and nutrients essential to human survival.”

Over the years I’ve told many people the San Joaquin Valley feeds the world. I always had a feeling they didn’t believe me.

Yes, the San Joaquin Valley is critical to the worlds food supply and it’s constantly in trouble. Drought is a huge problem in the valley. There just isn’t enough water to go around any longer.

What happens when crops can no longer be grown there due to climate change? Things will get ugly.

Christopher Sauveur: ”Indeed, when I started implementing more complex inspector views, with several text fields with or without steppers, or a color picker, everything became painfully slow. The SpriteKit view renders generally at a flawless 60 frames per second (as long as you’re not using an Intel iGPU). But everytime SwiftUI has to update the inspector view (during movement or even just by typing inside a text field), the render would go down to a very unstable 10~15 fps. It was unacceptable.”

This is a really nice read about a developer using SwiftUI with SpeiteKit. He really gave SwiftUI a fair shake and was able to create a really nifty application.

SwiftUI is another one of those mind bending experiences. To be good at it you have to fully embrace how it’s meant to work, not try to shoehorn your way of thinking into it.

Go with the flow.

Haaretz: ”American democracy is imperiled, under a constant domestic assault against its institutions, traditions and mores. Joe Biden knows this and made fixing the problem the rationale for his bid for the presidency. Now Biden has been convinced by historians that the danger is more imminent than even the January 2021 insurrection attempt suggested.”

President Biden’s speech sent many a Republican to their fainting couches with a case of the vapors.

The President did the unexpected. He called out the MAGA forces, and their orange leader, for attempting to destroy our democracy. Rightfully so.

The MAGA movement must be destroyed if our democracy is to survive.

For the umpteenth time, I say Apple needs an App Store ombudsman. An advocate for developers like Shihab here. https://t.co/R3APum2uin

— John Gruber (@gruber) September 2, 2022

Not good. Not good at all. Hope he can appeal and get this straightened out. https://t.co/YXSLI0gTtU

— Ged Maheux (@gedeon) September 2, 2022

Reading this about Shihab’s Aviary Twitter client really bummed me out. After seeing it I checked out the description for some other popular Twitter clients and they use the same language as Shihab.

Are all third party Twitter clients going to have to change their descriptions or be tossed out of the store or is this a one-off that will be corrected?

I hope he’s able to get his app update accepted soon.

Taylor Built Solutions: ”Given all of this focus on app and web development why would you want to learn C++ these days?”

I’m definitely biased but I think it’s fine to learn C++. I worked in the language for 20+ years and found it agreeable. Sure, it has pitfalls, but once you understand those it’s easy to live with them. The new language standards certainly help developers stay away from danger zones.

Dan Rather: ”It was clear to anyone who had an ounce of appreciation for what the job of the presidency entails, to anyone who respected the constitutional order of our government, to anyone who worried about the health and safety of this nation, to anyone with a moral compass, to anyone who prizes the common sense of purpose that great leaders can summon, that Donald J. Trump had no business anywhere near the presidency.”

Who doesn’t love Dan Rather? I think he’s doing better work today than he did when he was a news anchor.

Slate: ”I can recommend a cure for that, though it might be a bit strong for Lucy’s taste: A good old-fashioned Stephen King fantasy-horror epic. Happily, there’s a new specimen: Fairy Tale. Like its predecessors in the King canon—especially The Eyes of the Dragon, the Dark Tower series, and The Talisman (co-written with Peter Straub)—it’s sometimes grisly, sometimes tense, and sometimes a bit goofy.”

My wife and I are fans of Mr. King so I’d imagine this book will make its way into our home.

Dr. Drang: ”A couple of weeks ago, I decided to cut back on my RSS feed reading.1 Not by reducing the number of feeds I’m subscribed to, but by filtering articles to eliminate those that would just be a waste of my time.”

As a creator of a feed reader I think this is a brilliant idea. Perhaps some day I’ll be able to add regex support to Stream?

I only have about 100 other features to complete. 😂

Paul Lefebvre: ”In my continuing series of Atari BASIC programs I wrote in the 80s as I was first learning to program, I present Atari Painter.”

I have a soft spot in my heart for the BASIC programming language. My first gig as a professional developer was working on accounting software written in BASIC, some dating back to 1968. It had all the nifty features of BASIC like goto and gosub but we also made use of Microsoft’s very modern Professional BASIC. The new code was nicely structured with functions and sub routines and we even leveraged some third party assembly language code for various parts of the app.

Barn Finds: ”There were three stars of the quasi-classic 1980 movie, The Blue Brothers: Saturday Night Live alum John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and a 1974 Dodge Monaco, dressed up as a retired Chicago police car.”

Quasi-classic? How dare you sir!

The Blues Brothers is a great 80’s film. Great cast, a fun premise, and fantastic music.

If you’re ever in the mood for a fun 80’s film this one is worth a watch.

Today marks four weeks since my knee replacement.

I know it’s only Tuesday but it’s been a good week. I’ve been walking more naturally and my leg is feeling stronger, turns out your quadriceps are really important to recovering from a knee replacement.

Today I went to my first physical therapy session outside of our home. I was kind of worried they’d drive me in the ground but they didn’t. The two things we did work on were; quadriceps strength and flexing the knee by extending my leg straight out and flexing it by pulling it back toward myself.

My hope is to be able to flex my leg to 120 degrees. I haven’t been able to do that in close to 20 years. I can currently bend it to 90 degrees, which I believe is better than I could do pre-op!

Oh, I also switched over to a cane today. Bye bye walker.

I’m getting there. 👍🏼

Kim is taking Kolby to the doggy groomer.

I think it’s time for a nap.

I was finally able to sleep in my own bed last night. The stairs are no longer an obstacle. Sure, I have to be deliberate about how I walk up them, but it’s easy enough.

I managed to sleep from 10PM to 6AM. That’s the best sleep I’ve had since before my surgery on August 2.

As a result I’m feeling much better today. I’m not nodding off like I’ve been doing for days and days.

Here’s hoping I continue to get the rest I need.

This is my favorite part of the morning. It’s quiet. Our puppers, Kolby, and our kitties have been fed and Kolby has been let out to do his business. I have my coffee — on the couch with an ice pack on my knee — composing this post.

Sweet silence.

Ars Technica: “Brian Kernighan said hello, asked how their US visit was going, and dropped off hundreds of lines of code that could add Unicode support for AWK, the text-parsing tool he helped create for Unix at Bell Labs in 1977.”

It’s so encouraging to see a legend of computing going strong.

Steven Beschloss: “I didn’t intend to return to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis so soon, but the combination of his latest nastiness combined with the emerging approach of his newly decided Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, made it clear that the Florida race for governor represents more than the question of who will lead Florida into the future. This is shaping up to be a battle between leadership driven by anger and cruelty and leadership that believes kindness and compassion must define our fate.”

I can’t for the life of me understand why people vote for someone so cruel. He has every trait that made Trump such a disaster and he’s a lot smarter than Trump, which makes him even more dangerous.

Democrats are winning because they are the party of freedom. The freedom to choose. The freedom to make a living wage. The freedom to love. The freedom to vote. The freedom to live on a sustainable planet.

Republicans are losing because they are a cult that worships a moron.

— Bradley Whitford (@BradleyWhitford) August 24, 2022

Platformer: “Zatko maintained his public silence for eight months — and then showed up on Tuesday throwing bombs.”

My initial reaction to this news was it would help Musk get out of the Twitter deal. Now I don’t think it’ll help him.

He’s still gonna need his $54.20 per share.

There’s also the ever popular musk.social sitting out there for a $1MM donation to Planned Parenthood. Quite a deal!

Puck News: “‘It’s not been a fun morning,’ Stacy Spikes told me today from New York, where he’s been prepping the new and (hopefully!) improved MoviePass.”

I totally took advantage of MoviePass in 2017. I saw a few movies and it was so worth the price.

This new and improved version could be a boon to movie theaters looking to put butts in seats in our endemic COVID world.

Macworld: “The problem is that, with a month or so to go before macOS Ventura goes final, the System Settings app in the beta is a bit of a disaster. Unless things change in a hurry, Apple is in danger of replacing one of the worst system apps in macOS with a new app that’s just as bad or worse.”

I would love to know why this new OS app is so klunky. I haven’t experienced it myself but from all accounts it’s a real mess.

Now, it could be the app is waiting on some changes from the SwiftUI team to fix some nasty bugs or, perhaps, we’re seeing learning pains from the developer responsible for the app? It happens to the most seasoned developer when you have to make that brain shift to a new paradigm.

If it manages to ship in a buggy state with a terrible user experience it doesn’t bode well for SwiftUI. Who wants to invest their time in a technology that’s not ready for prime time?

Of course SwiftUI is the future of app development for all Apple Platform based applications, it’s just really ugly at the moment.

SwiftUI is amazing until you're totally blocked on something dumb like a custom back button.

(Yes, you can hide default and add your own. Yes, that breaks back swipe. Yes, you can override the pan gestures. No, you can't prevent it from fucking up a NavigationPath.)

— Craig Hockenberry (@chockenberry) August 26, 2022

Fresnoland: “In 2021, the Fresno area experienced 69 days over 100 degrees – a record-breaking number of days, according to data from the National Weather Service. There have already been more than 50 days over 100 this year.”

I was born and raised in the great San Joaquin Valley of California. Yes, it’s hot, no way around it, but these increasing days over 100 degrees isn’t good in so many ways. Climate change is real and we’ve screwed ourselves. The human toll is just getting started.

Jalopnik: “Tesla CEO Elon Musk is none too pleased with Tesla drivers who are pointing out major issues with the company’s Full Self-Driving software, according to Insider.“

Have you seen some of the very damning videos of Tesla’s running over child sized mannequins? It’s really disturbing and Musk isn’t happy about it. He wants them pulled. So much for open feedback.

Fully Self Driving vehicles is a pipe dream at the moment and Tesla is experimenting right out in the open. Tesla’s are dangerous cars when used in FSD mode and it should be banned from general use until Tesla can consistently demonstrate it works.

The UC system was free for Californians until the late 60s when Reagan, then Governor, cut state funding.https://t.co/E5Mf2NPN1c

— Derek Powazek (@fraying) August 24, 2022

Yes, believe it or not, University of California schools were once free to attend. As a nation we need this to come back. Make all State Colleges and Universities free. If you want to go to Harvard that’s fine, you can pay for your education. It gives folks choice and will make America a better place.

I had my final in home physical therapy session this morning. I’m always excited for PT days to see what the therapist has in store for me. Today was pretty straight forward. It was basically graduation day.

He had me walk about 10 feet, turn around, and walk back, all without the walker. It felt really great to be able to do that.

After that we chatted about how it felt. Then I had a do a timed version of that. While seated I had to stand up, walk 10 feet, turn around, and walk back. All controlled. It’s not a test meant to break records, it’s meant to compare to the same movement earlier on in the process. We didn’t do it early on so there’s nothing to compare to, but it felt natural and the leg felt strong.

The final exercise today was to do as many “sit-to-stand” as I can, in 30 seconds. Using one of our dining room chairs I would go from the seated to standing position and back to seated. I was able to do seven reps in 30 seconds. It also felt great! Toward the end my left quad was feeling it. That’s a good thing. These exercises are about strengthening the muscle structure around the knee. It’s working. 😄

To round things out he measured how far I could bend the knee. He’s been doing this all along. Today I could get to 90 degrees. I could t do that prior to surgery.

I’m pooped out because I’m very out of shape and still nowhere near a 100%, but I’m very excited about my progress and really happy with the overall improvement to my knee.

Exciting day!

Progress has slowed a bit. Last Thursday I woke up with a painful left ankle. I figured it was from physical therapy and was just sore.

It wasn’t just sore. I couldn’t work it out and I couldn’t walk properly because of it. I called the doc, she had me come in on Friday, and decided it could be one of three things; a stress fracture, blood clots, or tendinitis.

I got an X-ray which eliminated that possibility. The next order of business was to check for blood clots.

Saturday rolls around and it’s still painful, but as the day progresses I notice it’s feeling a bit better.

When I wake up Sunday I notice most of the pain is gone and I can walk pretty normally. Seems like it must have been blood clots.

As I get started this morning I feel like I’m back where I need to be to move my recovery forward. 👍🏼

I’m on week three of my post knee replacement recovery. This week has been full of ups and downs. I’ve had swings from great days to disappointing days.

Yesterday I had my left ankle — the ankle on the repaired leg — checked for stress fractures. Thank goodness it was negative. Could be blood clots, could be tendinitis. Not sure yet.

Overall it was still the right thing for me to do. Hiccups are part of recovery.

I went back to work this week. It was really nice to get back in the swing of things. It was tiring but fulfilling. I’m looking forward to a return to normal.

Felix Krause: ”Introducing InAppBrowser.com, a simple tool to list the JavaScript commands executed by the iOS app rendering the page.”

Felix found interesting JavaScript injected into Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

At first I thought this was a custom browser. As I read on and thought about it I realized it’s most likely the Apple supplied browser component supplied by their platform; WKWebView.

I use this very component in Stream to view feed content. It’s a critical part of many iOS and Mac apps.

In Stream support for JavaScript is turned off. To date I don’t see a reason to have it on.

The Verge: ”It turns out that JavaScript, the programming language that web developers and users alike love to complain about, had a hand in delivering the stunning images that the James Webb Space Telescope has been beaming back to Earth.”

Back when I started writing software for a living it was all about C. It was ubiquitous. If you wrote apps you did it in C.

Today the language of choice is JavaScript. Sure, we have all kinds of languages these days, but JavaScript seems to be king.

It looks like the James Webb Space Telescope uses a very old version of JavaScript, but why would it need a super modern one? It was also what we had at the time it was built

BBC: ”Twitter says it calculates the number of fake accounts through mainly human review. It says it picks out thousands of accounts at random each quarter and looks for bot activity.”

I think the man is going to be forced to purchase the company. His shenanigans end here.

Will Musk be able to get Twitter to turn the corner once the purchase is complete? Who knows. 🍿

Still waiting for you, Mr. Musk.

In 2006 and Apple Developer membership (small company/individual) cost $500 per year. pic.twitter.com/IGzUWIfM87

— Dad (@GeekAndDad) August 19, 2022

Wild how much a developer membership used to cost.

I’m happy it’s $99 today. At $500 there’s really no way I could justify keeping mine year-over-year.

Associated Press: ”SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple disclosed serious security vulnerabilities for iPhones, iPads and Macs that could potentially allow attackers to take complete control of these devices.”

Upgrade all your devices, today.

Molly Knight: ”After ten days of feeling the horrible flu like symptoms everyone else with Covid gets, things started to improve, then got rapidly worse. I couldn’t stand up without vomiting. The world was spinning off its axis. I couldn’t look at computer screens, my phone, or a television without feeling like I was going to pass out. Sometimes my vision would go black for no reason at all. Walking unassisted was not possible. Being alone was not possible.”

It is wild to see how COVID treats folks so differently. This is an absolute horror story.

I have a friend who suffered from long COVID and had to learn how to walk again. Two plus years later she woke up and things had gone back to normal. She’s one of the lucky ones.

Bottom line: COVID is still with us and it’s no joke. Do what you can to avoid catching it. Be cautious.

My cousin had to return to in-person work, got COVID from her boss, and passed away today. She leaves behind 13-year old twin girls, a husband, a mother who will now have to bury her last surviving child, and family who will forever miss her smile. The pandemic is not over.

— Elise V Mike, MD, PhD (@EliseVMike) August 16, 2022

Tragic. I have no words to describe how tragic this is. A family destroyed overnight. 😔

Robert Reich: ”After January, Liz Cheney will no longer be in Congress. But her role in American politics is not over. She is now the de facto leader of the Trump opposition — in the Republican Party and also, in a larger sense, in American politics.”

I don’t agree with 99% of what Liz Cheney believes, but I 100% agree with her regarding Trump. He has us on the precipice of a second Civil War and is destroying democracy a bit here, a bit there. If he’s not stopped and we cannot stamp out Trumpism we’re in big trouble.

Apple can’t revert to Sys Prefs because it would be an admission that this slide is wrong. So they’ll ship the abomination which will also show that the slide is wrong. pic.twitter.com/k5KtCEOkaB

— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) August 16, 2022

Is negativity the right word if the framework is actually lacking pretty majorly on at least one platform and the people criticizing it genuinely want it to be better? https://t.co/vtOha9yOTT

— Collin Donnell (@collindonnell) August 16, 2022

John Gruber: ”But the basic fit and finish of Ventura’s new System Settings is just bad. It feels like there’s something deeply wrong with Swift UI that, even while in-progress, so many little layout details are apparently hard to get right.”

Most of the complaints I see and hear regarding SwiftUI have to do with its support of the Mac. It doesn’t seem to be as stable on the Mac as it does on watchOS and iOS.

Here’s the thing. The Mac market, while healthy, is much smaller than the iOS market — iPhone and iPad — so I can see them prioritizing iOS over macOS support.

Dog fooding SwiftUI on the Mac should cause Apple to improve SwiftUI support for the Mac but when will it?

I also wonder about the person or persons responsible for development of the System Settings application. I don’t doubt their intelligence or programming skill but SwiftUI is a paradigm shift that could trip up the most seasoned developer.

I’d also love to see Apple put its money where its mouth is and create a new productivity app or rewrite one of the existing ones to use SwiftUI. I’d pick Keynote as the guinea pig.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed your coffee. ☕️

I can already see today is going to be a half day for me.

I’m having a minor setback in my recovery. Over the last couple weeks my knee has never been the issue during the recovery process. Last Friday it was a pulmonary embolism and I got past that.

On Monday I had a really great PT session and it felt amazing.

On Wednesday I had two different doctors appointments and walked a lot, which wiped me out.

Queue up Thursday. My ankle hurts, a lot. I’m not sure if it’s blood clots or I’ve somehow done some real damage to it. For the first time in over a week I had to use my pain meds.

And here we are, it’s Friday. My brain decided it wanted to be awake at 4AM and my ankle is extremely stiff and painful. Walking is a real bear, so of course I’m trying to avoid it, but it’s necessary for the recovery process!

I’ve taken some more pain meds and wrapped my knee and ankle in ice in hopes the ankle will start to feel a bit better because I have my final physical therapy session today and would like to make some decent forward progress.

More later. For now I’m getting some coffee in me. ☕️