Saturday Morning Coffee

Time to sip my coffee and put together the stuff I found interesting this week. I may even include some older stuff. Who knows? I certainly don’t. 🤷🏻‍♂️

New York Magazine: ”As expected, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Tuesday in Delaware Chancery Court for trying to wriggle out of the $44 billion deal he put together in the first place. The whole thing is just beyond weird — and not just for the world of business, but crazy on just about every plane of interpretation.”

From what I’m reading and hearing Musk is in a really bad position. Apparently Delaware Chancery Court moves really quickly and it sounds like they’ll force him to buy it or come up with the difference between todays stock price and his offer price to get out of the deal.

I hope he takes the deal to walk away, which could cost him billions, not just the $1 billion breakup fee. I’d like to see him out because if the man does end up with it I figure it’ll be shuttered or sold to someone else for much less.

Find a serious buyer or get it back on its feet. Tough road, I know.

Also, Mr. Musk, I still have musk.social sitting out here for you. Let’s talk. 😃

Slate: ”Jason van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers—a group of self-appointed vigilantes who were instrumental in storming the Capitol—told the House committee that the actions of the group on Jan. 6 provided “a glimpse” of their vision. The group had actively hoped for (and trained for) the chance to participate in a violent insurrection like the kind staged in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency.”

If you don’t fear for the survival of our democracy and the potential for Civil War, why aren’t you?

The GOP is 100% MAGA at this point. They want to burn it all down and are working to take rights away from us common folk. They’ve already done it with a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her and her body. They want to go much, much, further.

When Trumpty-Dumpty said “I’ll have to wait and see” when asked about accepting the outcome of the election we now know he was serious about remaining in power.

Go back to March of 2018

Back in March 2018, Trump gave a closed-door speech at Mar-a-Lago to Republican donors in which he said this of Chinese President Xi Jinping: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” - [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/donald-trump-term-limit/index.html ?utm_source=rob-fahrni)

Take him at his word. That joke is not a joke. He wants to be President of the United States for the remainder of his life. If he gets back in office he’ll never leave and our Democracy will die.

Again, the GOP wants to take the entire nation backwards.

The notion that we’d get really close to Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale is terrifying and not a place I want to live.

[Dave Winer](http://scripting.com/2022/07/15.html#a124125 ?utm_source=rob-fahrni): ”Podcasts are RSS 2.0 feeds with enclosures that contain the podcast content. Anything that doesn’t use a feed to distribute the audio isn’t a podcast, and shouldn’t use that name. Eventually Spotify will regret diluting the meaning of the name…”

Podcasting is an open distribution system like RSS. In fact podcast distribution is via an RSS feed and, as Dave says, it’s not a podcast unless it’s distributed that way.

Services by Spotify, Apple, and Substack that lock content into their own proprietary systems need to use a different name. They are not Podcasts by definition.

[Laptop Mag](https://www.laptopmag.com/news/84-scam-apps-still-active-on-app-store-steal-over-dollar100-million-annually ?utm_source=rob-fahrni): ”Despite analysts reporting on 133 fraudulent apps on Apple’s App Store, 84 subscription-based iOS apps are still scamming unsuspecting victims into forking over an accumulated $103.2 million annually — and they’ve been active for over a year.”

I’m clearly in the wrong segment of iOS App development. I need to make a game that creates whales so I can sell them tokens to get past stages or earn more points.

The $10-15 per month I’m earning now is such a laugh but at least I’m not a scumbag developer.

Also, shame on Apple for allowing this to happen right inside a store they market as safe and secure. That safety should include not being ripped off by scammy apps.

[CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/politics/trump-secret-service-january-6-metropolitan-police-officer/index.html ?utm_source=rob-fahrni): ”A Washington, DC, police officer has corroborated to the House select committee investigating , details regarding a heated exchange former President Donald Trump had with his Secret Service detail when he was told he could not go to the US Capitol after his rally, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN.”

Trump and crew need to be convicted of some type of Federal Crime so they can never hold public office again, at a minimum.

I’d prefer the entire Trump Crime Family see a bit of jail time.

This is a real surprise. I trust Microsoft will do a great job and Netflix will get what they’re after, but the fact Netflix is going to do an ad supported tier is really surprising.

They are a premium brand. This move makes them feel less premium.

Virginia Mercury: ”In the search for hard-to-find bottles of bourbon at Virginia ABC stores, some liquor enthusiasts have been worried about leaks of a more serious kind.”

A little explanation for my friends in states without state run liquor stores. ABC is Virginia’s state run liquor store. When you want to buy anything stronger than beer or wine you have to go to ABC.

In the South Bourbon is king and certain bourbons are highly sought after. When we arrived and I sauntered into an ABC looking to purchase some bourbon the clerk mentioned they’d just received a shipment of Buffalo Trace. That didn’t mean anything to my California brain. I could get Buffalo Trace in California anytime I wanted. It wasn’t rare. But in Virginia it’s a real treat and flys off the shelves as soon as it hits the store.

So, with that context, this is a huge scandal in Virginia.

McSweeney’s: ”As you can probably tell by looking around, every employee at our startup is 23 years old. On the morning of your 24th birthday, the barcode on your employee ID stops working and you can no longer enter our building.”

This is funny to me because there is a bit of truth to it. When I turned 40 and went to work for LEVEL Studios I felt really, really, old. Then, at 52, when I landed a gig at WillowTree and met my new group I felt absolutely ancient. 👴🏼

It may sound strange but the pandemic helped me immensely. I could control the environment around me. I could focus more easily. The office was full of young folks flitting about the office with their laptops never sitting in one spot, and it was really noisy and distracting.

I’m really grateful I’m now a part of our remote only team.

Enjoy your coffee. ☕️

Tiny Apple Core

We’ve been waiting for these little aliens to hatch for a while.

I finally decided to pull the fern down and look inside. 🐦

Naming is hard

I need a little help from y’all. If I get a few replies I’ll be happy about it and it may help me figure out what to do, it may not. I change my mind a lot. 😁

One of my apps, Arrgly, was named that because I couldn’t come up with a good name for it. It’s a URL shortener that works with a backend service called YOURLS. If you’re not familiar with YOURLS it’s self hosted so you can have your own shortening service. Mine is f67.us.

There’s a bit of context. Oh, and Arrgly is how a pirate might say ugly. “Arrrr, it be arrgly!” It’s also why the first version had a skull and bones icon.

Ok, enough of that.

I’ve always hated the name and I’ve come to hate version 2.0 of the UI. I was being really silly when I did it, but it did the job, and was a bit more fun.

Since then Arrgly has been pulled from the store because I hadn’t updated it in a long time. Totally my fault. I knew it was going to happen and didn’t update it in time.

So, all that said. I want to rename it when I do the next release. It’ll still do everything it already does but I’m reworking the UI to make it a super generic iOS App. No silly patterns or gargoyle spinners. 😃

Here are some of the names I’ve been thinking about using:

  • Smoosh
  • Shorty
  • Shrink
  • Smalls
  • Trim

I’ve had the project renamed Smoosh for a few weeks now and I’m not overly fond of it.

If you have an opinion I’m @fahrni on Twitter or you can send me email at rob.fahrni@gmail.com.

Thanks for the help. 🙏🏼

P.S. Another difficulty with naming is the icon. It’s tough to make a really great icon.

Twitter and RSS

Why do I want this? Well, shameless self promotion here, I make a feed reader called Stream. It allows you to subscribe to RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed, so you can bring content to your feed reader instead of visiting a bunch of individual sites.

I Love RSS! That’s about the best I can describe it. RSS, and the other types, are open formats and allow data to travel freely across the web. If Twitter supported RSS again feed reader users could subscribe to individual feeds to get updates from folks they follow.

I would like to have it so I could subscribe to my Politics Twitter List. It’s full of news sources I like to read occasionally and don’t really interact with. If I would like to interact with a particular account tweet I could open right to it in the browser and respond.

This is more of a passive approach than Twitter would probably like us to have but it sure opens us up to other ways of following news, which Twitter is really good at.

Sure, I could build functionality directly into Stream to hook into the Twitter API but it would be easier to use an open format that is tried and true fabric of the web.

Twitter has the ability to easily generate a feed when they update a Twitter stream. It’s just text in a specific format that’s easy to build. And, believe it or not, they used to it!

I’m certain developers of feed readers would appreciate the effort. ❤️

Dreaming

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.I have pretty vivid dreams. Most of them center around a few places with certain people.

I dream a lot about Exeter, the town we called home for years and years. Exeter dreams typically center around the home Kim and I brought our girls up in. It was an old farm house that was built in the early 1900’s and is one of the oldest homes in town. In those dreams the house is much larger than usual, has a really long hallway, and is full of family members. The land surrounding the house is vast. Now, the home in the real world is nothing like that, but in my dreams I know it’s our old Exeter home.

I also dream about Lindsay, my childhood home. In those dreams I’m typically with my Mom or my Grandfather. They are the two most influential people in my life. Both had immensely beautiful hearts and loved everyone. Mom’s home was full of love, we didn’t have much, but we had her love. That meant everything. Grandpa was definitely the patriarch of the family. He was a great man who loved his family more than anything. He often helped Mom pay the bills and kept us fed. They were both selfless and gave their all to family, friends, and strangers.

Mom and Grandpa would take us to a joint called Bob’s Drive-In. It’s a burger joint that also made fresh donuts daily. Their cinnamon rolls were to die for, crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle. My dreams in Lindsay always include them and Bob’s, amongst other things.

I’ve shared many times how often my dreams are about being back with the Visio team. In those dreams Seattle often takes on a futuristic city you might see in a sci-fi movie. Huge, really crowded, with trains, and buildings taller than anything we have today. I typically end up in the building on the floor occupied by Visio. It’s almost always my first day back and I’m usually walking around the engineering area talking with old friends and meeting new people.

That sets the stage for last nights Visio dream.

I was with part of the old Visio gang. They’d started a new venture and we were adjusting everyone’s pay down to get through the economic downturn. My brain was definitely weaving my recent concerns into the mix. I was working with Richard, an old Visio friend, on new contracts for each developer to sign outlining their reduction in pay. Some employees, like myself, signed the contract without issue. Others were not so happy. It’s at that point, Kolby, our doggie, decided it was time for me to wake up. Poof. Dream gone.

Wonder which dream I’ll have tonight?

Beauty in Kim’s flower bed.

Saturday Morning Coffee

My wife Kim and daughter Taylor drove from Virginia to California this week. I admit I’m really jealous about the whole thing. I love that drive and would’ve happily done it again.

Lately the news in the good ole US of A has been a complete garbage fire. Mass shootings at Fourth of July celebrations, Women’s right to choose being stripped, and an ever widening gap between political parties are disheartening.

I still believe we’re on the edge of a knife. One wrong move and we fall into Civil War.

I know it may feel like voting is worthless, but it’s not. It’s the most important civic duty we have in this country.

Vote

Chicago Tribune: ”On an idyllic summer morning, from a rooftop high above the Highland Park Independence Day parade, a gunman aimed down at the floats and lawn chairs and strollers and opened fire.”

No, it’s not the weapon! Clearly this person has mental issues. Right?

WRONG! Clearly someone who takes a high powered rifle to an event and starts firing on the crowd has issues.

It’s access to the AR-15 that’s the problem. Ban them!

Sorry gun lovers. It’s time to get serious about gun ownership in America. Time for laws restricting who can purchase a weapon. Time for background check and a responsible NRA. Time for a lot of change.

Robert Reich: ”An increasing number of Republicans are openly pushing to turn America into a theocracy.”

I am 100% behind anyone practicing their religion; Jew, Muslim, Christian, whatever. As a Nation we are guaranteed that right.

What we do not need is a National Religion. Keep it out of politics and our laws.

There has, at times, been a huge moral panic over Sharia Law. How is having Christian Law any different?

Remember, separation of Church and State. That’s the ticket.

Evan Lee: “When I say ‘cloud computing’, your mind may immediately jump to huge names like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure. My brain certainly did when searching for a home in the clouds for one of my personal projects. Here’s my journey navigating the internet to find that just-right Cloud Computing Platform.”

Interesting read if you’re a hobbyist developer or building a product with the need for a backend service.

At one time it was easy enough to build something that ran on the desktop to do amazing work. Now serious software almost always needs some sort of scaling backend service and it’s darned expensive.

I’d personally love to have a backend service for Stream that handled fetching and stripping web pages down to their basic content, but I can really afford to do it. So, in the end, I’ll be adding that capability to the client side itself.

If you are considering a host for a backend service go read the article. It’s informative.

Oh, and Lee, if you read this I’d encourage you to get your own domain and put all of your content there. You can still cross post to Medium but you need to own this content. Medium can put your work behind a paywall and that’s no good for your articles.

NPR: ”LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has finally resigned as leader of the Conservative Party under heavy pressure from lawmakers in his own party. His resignation caps a remarkable political career filled with highs, lows and almost too many scandals to count.”

The only thing I really know about Boris Johnson is he’s seen as the UK version of our own bafoon, Donald Trump. Ick.

Here’s hoping England all the best! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Fresnoland: ”Roughly two years after the Fresno City Council approved mobile showers and restrooms for the unhoused community, the city’s first mobile shower trailer is up and running.”

Like many cities in America, Fresno has a large homeless population.

While I often wish I had the power to wave a wand and fix it I’m ultimately naive to all factors contributing to homelessness.

I’m happy to see Fresno doing something to help.

Vox: ”Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, seen here in 2016, was assassinated while campaigning for a candidate in Nara, Japan, on July 8.”

This is horribly tragic for Japan and the world.

I’ve feared political assassinations happening here in the United States for a few years now. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that. 🙏🏼

The assault on women in our country continues. Women have been warning of tragic deaths as a result of overturning Roe v. Wade. Sadly, it’s happening.

Tech Crunch: ”According to a new report from The Washington Post that relies heavily on anonymous sources, the world’s richest man is still looking for a way out of a $44 billion deal of his own making.“

The worlds richest man and biggest troll is now trying to get out of a deal he decided didn’t need due diligence before making it.

He really messed up and he knows it. I hope Twitter gets every dime they’re due for him leaving the deal or a Delaware court enforcing it.

Oh, Mr. Musk, I still have musk.social if you’d like to buy it. I’ll sell it to you for a fat donation to Planned Parenthood? Say, a million bucks?

Variety: ”James Caan, whose indelible, Oscar-nominated performance as Sonny Corleone, the recklessly hotheaded son of Marlon Brando’s Mafia don in “The Godfather,” is sure to be remembered as long as there are gangster movies, died on Wednesday, his family announced in Twitter. He was 82.”

Every once in a while I search for an older move from the 70’s or 80’s to watch. I particularly like movies with James Caan or Gene Hackman. Recently I rewatched Thief from 1981. Great film.

I know he was brilliant in the The Godfather and Elf but my favorite Caan film is Misery.

RIP

I wish David Rothkopf would keep a personal blog where he’d write freely like he does on Twitter.

This is a long thread worth a read regarding politicians and the DC establishment.

Tiny Apple Core

Kim and Taylor had to take a little detour and visit Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo.

They’re having a great road trip! 🥳

Update from Taylor and Kim on the road to California. 🤣

Get a Blog

RibbitI’d like to challenge folks.

If you have an account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon, insert your favorite service here you should have a blog.

Why?

Because all the stuff you pump into those services are kept as part of the service. It’s your content. At the very least you should consider having your own domain even if you choose to host it on a place like Micro.blog, Blogger, WordPress, or Tumblr to name a few.

Again, why?

Well, even if you decide to move off of one of those services you have access to your data and you own the domain. That means you could move hosts and/or hosting services and maintain the links of all your old content.

I’m currently paying $5/month for a Micro.blog account and it’s so worth it. Micro.blog posts everything as static HTML which means all of my posts are easy to move. It’s just text!

It looks like a deer visited us last night. Yesterday the green stuff in the middle of the picture was a day lilly with a bunch of flowers on it. 😂

We just got back from BBQ and fireworks with our kids and grandkids. Had a lot of fun. 🌭🎇

Now I’m on the porch, having a beer, listening to the critters and watching fire flies. 🍺

Oh, and the temperature is perfect with no noticeable humidity. 🌡

A perfect day. 👌

Freedom

There are plenty of wonderful people in states like Florida but their leadership is pathetic, same with Texas.

Perhaps Democrats need to migrate into those states to flip the vote instead of luring folks out. 🤔

God’s Plan?

Here we go, again, back to the Constitution of the United States. Also, I’m not a lawyer, but I can read and digest the written word.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The very first sentence says the United States cannot have an official religion. That’s a good thing. It means we can co-exist with Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Athesists.

I have no problem with folks practicing their religion but to justify the rape of a 10-year old as “God’s plan” is disgusting.

Serve God, love Jesus, spread love and compassion to the world like you’re called to do. Don’t force your belief down my throat or others.

Just an FYI: Jesus never mentions abortion in the Bible. If you want to go Old Testament on people with ”Thou shalt not kill” that’s fine. I wonder how many Christians have killed folks for adultery?

“If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.” - Leviticus 20:10 NIV

I would imagine Christians aren’t lining up to murder their adulterous spouses. They may want to but we have laws, man’s law, that forbid it.

Given that context should we allow murder to be acceptable in the United States for adulterers? Of course not.

We cannot apply Christian beliefs to the law. Leave your beliefs at the door when it comes to governing and making law.

A woman’s right to choose what’s best for her is none of your business. Nose out.

Once again. This is not God’s plan. It’s a rapist impregnating a 10-year old girl!

On Gun Laws

What follows is my naive take on gun safety and laws around ownership.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Here’s when I start asking stupid questions, I’m not a lawyer, please be kind.

I’m thinking about states like California who have pretty strict laws around guns but the recent Supreme Court decision may make Californians less safe.

Could California, or any state with tight gun regulations, create a militia program that requires gun owners to register their firearms, be trained on their use at least once a year, buy insurance for each gun, pass any psychological tests, pass background checks and require a permit, or license, that shows they’re qualified to own and fire their guns? Folks in the military are required to demonstrate their proficiency with their weapons once a year.

Everyone likes to skip the “A well regulated Militia” bit. I typically hear ”the Second Amendment says I can have a gun.”

Sure, ok, it says you can have a gun as part of a well regulated militia. It doesn’t say what type of gun, or you can own as many as you’d like, or that you don’t need a license to own it, or that you can be untrained.

If it’s legally possible states that would like to restrict access to weapons of war should, if they can, make state sponsored militias, with strict rules around ownership. It seems a good first step to squashing mass killing incidents.

Another thing. Banning weapons of war for anything outside of the military seems the reasonable thing to do. Folks that say they need an AR-15 for hunting are full of crap. You don’t need one for hunting. Just admit that you have a thing for killing weapons, a machismo if you will, and get on with it. There are plenty of specialized weapons for hunting. You’re not going to hunt bird with an AR-15. You’d never hit anything in the air.

I was a hunter as a kid. I went to training to learn how to properly handle a shotgun for bird hunting and had to demonstrate I could be responsible with it. I’m pretty certain the training I received was backed by the NRA, but I’m not 100% sure.

I hope we can eliminate mass murder in America, soon.

Saturday Morning Coffee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He also relays his SwiftUI experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiny Apple Core

Pictures from around the house.

Flynn, just hanging out.

Roe v. Wade Overturned

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.I’m a husband, father, and grandfather. I vote each election and support candidates I believe will move the country forward.

As such, a Woman has the absolute right to make decisions about her own body. That includes abortion.

The GOP wants us to believe Women were put on this Earth to be baby making machines. It’s pathetic and disgusting.

I don’t know what I can do to fix the life altering overturning of Roe v. Wade, but I’m going to try.

Women deserve and require our help to fix this mess. It is my absolute duty as a husband, father, and grandfather to be part of the effort to fix it.

SCOTUS Blog: ”The Supreme Court on Friday eliminated the constitutional right to obtain an abortion, casting aside 49 years of precedent that began with Roe v. Wade.”

Vox: “Well, it’s done. Justice Samuel Alito has achieved a goal that he and his fellow Republicans have dreamed of for decades. Roe v. Wade is overruled. The constitutional right to an abortion no longer exists.”

Vanity Fair: ”In a shocking reversal of nearly 50 years of legal precedent, the conservative majority on the nation’s high court took a sledgehammer to reproductive rights in the United States, ending federal protections for abortion in a 6-3 vote and paving the way for states to outlaw the procedure.”

I love Daylillies, always have. At one point I had an entire flowerbed dedicated to numerous variations. As we’ve moved around, and we’ve move more than I’d like to admit, I’ve always had at least one.

I’ve been waiting on this beauty to pop for a year. 😍

Windows Desktop Apps?

Microsoft Cash Cow.I asked this on Twitter a few days back and got a few replies from folks I know to be died in the wool Windows Experts. The list of modern day Windows Desktop apps I got back was appallingly tiny. Yes, the apps listed are amazing examples of what can be done on Windows using the .Net platform, but where are the modern versions of Word, Excel, Pagemaker, Visio, or any of the Adobe Desktop Windows Apps? Why hasn’t someone stepped out of the shadows with richer applications built entirely on .Net with a modern look? Look, I’m an old Windows developer and I still care for, and believe in, the platform and rich desktop applications. Is the notion of building native, complex, rich, Windows apps lost or no longer worth the dedication and effort to do?

I changed direction in 2009 to focus on building iOS applications. I’m thankful to say I’ve been gainfully employed as an iOS developer ever since and I’ve managed to release some of my own iOS Apps in that time and started a native Mac App, but I still want to build for Windows. I’ve held onto the idea of building cross platform code in C++ to get Stream to multiple platforms, but now my thinking is changing.

How about I build a C#/.Net version of Stream for Windows? Is it worth the effort? Is it something I could hang my long term hat on?

Could I be the guy who builds iOS, Mac, and Windows Feed Readers for a living? I’d like to try. My biggest problem has been time, it’s probably fair to say time management is my biggest problem. I have a few updates to Stream for iOS that I’ve been sitting on for, what, a year now? And I still haven’t done any additional work on Stream for Mac so why on earth would I embark on Stream for Windows? I don’t have an answer for any of that, but I sure do want to.

Other Distractions

Just a couple days back I asked Jen Simmons, from the Safari/WebKit team at Apple, I’d Apple would be interested in backing a small team to bring a modern version of a WebKit based browser to Windows 11.

Yes, I’d love to form a small team to make that happen, I just don’t have the money to pull it off.

My thinking is this: all C#/.Net using the WinUI 3 framework for user interface with WebKit underneath. I have no idea how the WebKit rendering engine looks on Windows but I’m confident I could find a small team of developers, hi David, to make it world class (assuming it isn’t already.)

So, yes, there are those types of distractions I’m serious about.

Saturday Morning Coffee

Cold EspressoGood morning y’all. This week has been a bad one. The Supreme Court has finally gotten around to doing what we were all waiting for. It’s running the new GOP’s playbook. Making guns easier to carry and the big one, overturning Roe v. Wade. A settled law for 50 years.

That’s all I’m going to say on the matter for now.

On a personal note, I’m finally rid of COVID. 🥳

I had to lead with this story because Irms is a personal hero and all around wonderful person.

Gus Mueller: “On this day twenty years ago I registered the flyingmeat.com domain. I had no idea what I was doing back then, only that I loved coding, I loved sharing what I worked on, and indie companies were undisputedly cool.”

Gus is one of the good ones and an inspiration. If you’re a Mac user you may be familiar with his amazing software. If you’re not and need a photo editor that won’t break the bank you should check out Acorn.

Alex Ewerlöf: “For my 20 years programming anniversary, I tried to list the top principles that have been accumulated over the years as my guiding principles through my career:”

This is a really great list every developer should read.

Becoming a leader is not often what everyone thinks it is.

Senior Dev

Michael Moore: “I said none of that. I remained silent, and to this day the shame I still feel for standing there and doing nothing is so intense that I’ve sat here now for over a day trying to write this weekly letter to you and realizing I would have to admit my inaction, my culpability, and say very publicly that of all the regrets I have in my life, this one, this few seconds of turning my head the other way, hurts me the most.”

Michael Moore has been a bit of a rebel all his life, in a good way. I love this story, it’s really two-in-one, but it a look into an event that helped shape the Michael Moore of today.

Saman Bemel-Benrud: “Last week was the one year anniversary of the Mapbox Worker’s Union going public, the event that lead to my departure. So, now seems like an appropriate time to share my story. It may offer some insight into how the tech industry operates. Mapbox’s story is likely similar to other companies with promise and ambition that that haven’t quite broken through.”

I don’t know much about Mapbox but it’s a company I’d considered pursuing a job with when we decided to move east. They’re in Washington D.C.

The product is super compelling and they have SDK’s to support multiple platforms.

[LAist](https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/netflix-lays-off-300-employees-as-it-loses-subscribers ?utm_source=rob-fahrni): “Entertainment streaming giant Netflix laid off an additional 300 of their 11,000 worldwide staff on Thursday, following the layoffs of 150 employees, dozens of contractors, and other part-time staff in May.”

A reckoning is coming. All those lovely, inexpensive, stream services we’ve subscribed to over the last few years are finally gonna start raising prices and laying off staff to try to compete.

It was good while it lasted. 😃

Nick Martin - joe.coffee: “We started joe on the premise that by making it as convenient and rewarding for coffee-lovers to order ahead at independent shops as it is at Starbucks, people wouldn’t settle for corporate. When choosing local is hyper-convenient, small business thrives.”

There are a few applications I’d love to create. I’ve talked about a few of them but never mentioned my desire to create a service with mobile apps to allow folks to order coffee. The fine folks at joe.coffee did just that.

I don’t know exactly how their partnerships with coffee shops work but it’s a great idea. I’d still love to do this as I believe I have a different bent on the idea.

Bloomberg: “Members of the rock band Pink Floyd are seeking at least $500 million in a deal for their music catalog, according to people familiar with the talks, which would be one of the largest sales in music history.”

This is wild. When I see something like this it makes me wonder what caused the bad to decide to do this? Debt? Tired of messing with it? What? I’m probably naive to the something completely obvious.

Wonder who’s in the running for it?

CNN: “Michael J. Fox will be honored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for his contributions to film and his efforts to help cure Parkinson’s disease.”

How can you not love Michael J. Fox? I loved him in the Back to the Future Trilogy but there is a little film of his I love to watch from time to time. Doc Hollywood is a super cheesy early 90’s film with a great cast. It’s one of those cringy, makes you uncomfortable, films that turns out just the way you’d hoped it would. Think I’ll have to watch it tonight.

Tiny Apple Core

COVID, Finally over it

It’s about darned time. Today would’ve been Day 15 with COVID if this test hadn’t come back negative.

I tested on Tuesday, June 21, and was positive. So sometime between then and now I finally got over the hump.

I still have a cough and my head is a bit fuzzy/congested and I’m tired as heck because I haven’t been able to sleep the last two nights for some strange reason.

All I know is I’m testing negative and I intend to keep it that way.

About that update

John Gruber : “First, nine years is a long time, but Apple seemingly remains very committed to the iWork suite.”

So about that commitment. I just wanted to point out one of my apps was removed from the App Store because I hadn’t updated it in a few years, I believe it was five years.

That app, which is no big loss to the world, still works, as designed, on my iPhone to this day.

I’m surprised Apple didn’t kick their own apps out of the store for not keeping them up to date. 🤬

I remain committed to shipping an update someday, and it’ll be done in less than nine years, I hope.

Take that Apple! 🤣

Stream + Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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