I started watching The Sandman last night and it was amazing. I only watched two episodes because I’ve been watching on my iPhone. After episode two I decided I wouldn’t be watching any more episodes there and I’d be starting over on our TV.
The worlds and characters Neil Gaiman creates are absolutely beautiful. I’m obviously not a writer or critic but I know what I like and The Sandman has it all.
My lovely wife made me a mocha to go with composing this weeks post. That combined with oxycodone, ice, and elevation are doing their job. I can focus well enough to get this done. 🤞🏼
Shelly Rosen: ”The way Google’s two-factor authentication system is designed, sets up poor and elderly people to be locked out of their accounts again and again, and without access to their email, they lose their welfare benefits, their housing, and struggle to find work.”
I’m not sure what Google can do to fix this extremely important problem. Take some time to read Ms. Rosen’s letter it lays everything out for Google. As a developer this is the kind of feedback you hope to get from folks using your software.
TechCrunch: ”Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire Roomba maker iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion.”
Alexa, don’t vacuum the cat. This seems like a really sweet deal for Amazon. I can’t believe iRobot couldn’t fetch a higher price.
Los Angeles Times: “The California Department of Motor Vehicles has accused Tesla of false advertising in its promotion of the company’s signature Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technologies.”
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Tesla has been touring Full Self Drive for years and they’re no where near the desired functionality. Is it novel? Yes. Do I trust it? No way.
I can’t wrap my brain around the challenges the developers must be facing. And the icing on the cake would be Musk breathing down your neck to get it done. No thanks.
My idea of a better challenge would be tackling mass transit with electric motors and making it easier to travel long distances on electric trains and busses.
Heck, the eBikes business is really taking off.
Cartoon Brew: ”Dreamworks Animation has unveiled plans to release its proprietary production renderer Moonray as open-source software later this year.”
I’ve had a fascination with rendering pipelines for years and years. As far as I know Pixar’s RenderMan is still the Cadillac of rendering software but having an open source choice from a heavy hitter like Dreamworks is worthy of consideration, and it’ll be open so folks can contribute to it. Amazing!
When the git repo is made public you know I’ll be there poking around. 😃
Makes you wonder if Pixar will follow with RenderMan?
TechCrunch: ”Infowars founder Alex Jones took the stand today in a trial that will determine what he owes to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Last year, Jones was found liable in a series of defamation cases brought by the parents of Sandy Hook victims.”
Alex Jones is a grifter. He has an unwitting audience of people willing to believe anything because they hate everything and everyone. Jones feeds their animosity with wild stories of the deep state and blood drinking Democrats to drain them of their hard earned cash. Who’s the vampire?
Vulture: ”It’s pretty well known and even darkly joked about across all the visual-effects houses that working on Marvel shows is really hard. When I worked on one movie, it was almost six months of overtime every day. I was working seven days a week, averaging 64 hours a week on a good week. Marvel genuinely works you really hard. I’ve had co-workers sit next to me, break down, and start crying. I’ve had people having anxiety attacks on the phone.”
I don’t think this is a new reality of the VFX business. Rather, a horrible expectation set by major studios.
Deadline: ”Even though Batgirl is in the final stages of post-production, Deadline has confirmed that Warner Bros. and DC Films will not be releasing the movie on any platform, including theatrically.”
This is a real bummer. I was totally ready for it.
As far as release platforms go, I was fully expecting it to appear on HBO Max. It’s the streaming platform I use more than any other. More than Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Apple TV. Each of those services has a place in my streaming lineup, but HBO’s ability to release new movies to streaming early is it’s real superpower.
The Washington Post: ”SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk’s countersuit to Twitter contains aggressive new claims about the social media site’s methods for tallying bot and spam accounts — as well as which accounts generate ad revenue — cementing the strategy the billionaire is using to attempt to back out of the deal.”
I suspect Musk will be forced to show up and pay $54.20 per share.
The big question is, once he owns it can he make it something better or will he lose an uphill battle?
How do you deal with bot problems and nihilistic American politicians hell bent on turning our democracy into a self serving dictatorship.
I’m sure Mr. Musk has some really great ideas. It’s the bad ideas I’m worried about.
That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed your coffee or tea with your read. ☕️
“That knee was bad. I’m surprised you could walk.” - Dr. Edwards
The knee has finally been replaced. Tuesday was the big day and I’d hoped to come home that afternoon. Unfortunately my body had a different idea. When I’d stand my blood pressure would drop and I’d feel nauseated. 🤢
So I got to spend the night in the hospital. It was a good experience as far as hospitals go. All of the nursing staff were absolutely wonderful.
I was up early Wednesday morning, didn’t sleep much at all. Dr. Edwards dropped by as well as David, my Physical Therapist. Since I’d been able to use the toilet through the night safely and was able to walk to the end of the hall the Doctor and Physical Therapist signed off on me I was discharged around 10:30AM, Wednesday.
Thank you Sentra Martha Jefferson Hospital , Dr. John Z Edwards , and everyone I interacted with. Y’all are amazing.
Hello new knee!
So happy right now! 🙏🏼
Ms. Prissy Punkie Poopie Pants, AKA Priss, being her cute self.
I’m terrible. When my knees ache or hurt and I have household chores to do I tell myself “If you sit a while longer, they’ll feel better and you can go do your chores.”
I’m simultaneously negotiating with myself and willing my knees to feel better.
They’re not going to feel better. I just don’t want to fight through the pain to do what needs doing. 😂
Two more days to knee replacement surgery and it’s all I can think about.
I should’ve taken Monday off because I’m going to be distracted all day. 🤔
I bet getting an M1 MacBook Air would feel blazing fast given I’m still using a 2019 15in MacBook Pro.
Yes, it has the butterfly keyboard and my fingers don’t work on it. 😆
And, honestly, the old MacBook Pro is plenty fast for me.
Found this brand new little feller this morning slowly moving its little wings.
Today’s podcast queue should get me through the jungle I’m gonna tackle outside our backyard fence today, and then some.
The Takeout: ”Social media rumors don’t always prove to be true, but in the case of the Choco Taco, this one is sadly based in fact. RIP, Choco Taco, 1984-2022.”
This clearly the biggest, most important, news of the week. The Choco Taco wasn’t exactly a great treat but it wasn’t the worst.
I’m fine losing it as long at the It’s-it is never discontinued.
The Verge: ”Sounding like an exhausted parent, Mosseri agreed that Instagram’s new feed sucked and its recommendations might be bad and then told us it wasn’t going to get better. Instagram no longer cares about photos.”
I don’t have a lot of pity for Instagram. Unfortunately Facebook took a beloved application and platform and turned it into an ad platform. It’s not that businesses are bad for using it, why not use it? It’s bad because all I cared about was posting pictures and looking at my friends pictures.
There are much better alternatives today.
If you spent enough years using A/B tests to chase every little bump in engagement without any basis or logic behind what you’re changing or why, eventually people will find something else they like better for reasons you can’t understand.
— Ken Kocienda (@kocienda) July 26, 2022
That’s the lesson of Instagram.
Do you want a chronological feed?
— Glass (@tryglass) July 26, 2022
No ads?
No algorithms?
Never having anything in your feed you didn’t put there?
No celebrities selling you crypto nonsense?
High quality photos with P3 color support?
No public counts anywhere?
Just photos?
Only photos?
You’ll love Glass.
Glass is a wonderful alternative to Instagram and they don’t make you the product. The app just gets out of the way so you can see your feed of beautiful pictures. No ads, none of that Instagram garbage.
How do they manage to do it? By using an idea from long ago. They charge you $29.99US a year to use the platform and support running their business. Novel, right?
Oh, almost forgot, they have an iPad App and you can view pictures on the web without annoying prompts asking you to log in to view more photos. Imagine that, they embrace the open web.
Like most social networks I’m Fahrni on Glass.
Charles Chen: ”Whereas in the .NET ecosystem, Microsoft provides a rich set of professionally developed and curated first party libraries for many, many scenarios, JavaScript has no such governance.”
Look, I’m an old Microsoft Employee, via the Visio acquisition, and spent 20-years of my career building C++/Win32 applications. I still love using Windows and love Microsoft’s commitment to supporting old API’s, but .Net is amazing, especially when combined with C#.
I haven’t written any modern backend C# but I did enjoy the bit of time I spent developing backend code with it. It’s a really great platform if you’d like to be extremely productive.
I’d imagine that extends to the client side as well. My desire to write a cross platform Stream is dwindling. I believe I’ll do the Windows version in C#/.Net.
Robert Reich: ”Progressive states are becoming more progressive; regressive states, more regressive. As the states move to the left or right, state legislatures are becoming more active and important, while what happens in Washington is growing less so.”
This is a good read and worth a few minutes of your time.
The closing question is something I think about quite often.
The Verge: ”For Zuckerberg, the company he founded 18 years ago was facing existential threats on multiple fronts. Both Facebook and Instagram were being rearchitected to compete with TikTok. Apple’s iOS privacy settings had disrupted the company’s once-stable ad business, costing it billions in revenue. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg’s bet on the metaverse was a money pit that he didn’t see turning a profit until at least the end of the decade.”
I think we all knew Apple’s new privacy settings would put a dent in their earnings. Couple that with their constant morphing of their platforms; Facebook and Instagram, and their moonshot to be the leader in the Metaverse and it’s a perfect storm of misery. 🍿
### Black Lives Matter
It’s terrible that I have to write that little title for this section of my post. Of course black live matter. Until we can get over our long history of racism as a nation we will never be the truly great nation we strive to be.
If you say All Lives Matter and stop there you might be a racist. People saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean a black life is more important than yours. What is meant is ”My Black life is equally important as your life.”
Being able to say Black Lives Matter shouldn’t be hard to say because Black Lives are a subset of all lives.
It’s all about equity. Black lives are equal to white lives.
If you have a problem with LGBTQ+ folks you need to look deep inside and ask yourself why?
Let people live as they are. You have zero reason to judge or hate people just because they don’t fit your idea of who they should be.
Another strange equity problem in our nation. My wife is my equal.
So many folks say Christianity tells them a woman is subservient to her man.
Hey, if you and your family believe that and you agree that’s how your family will operate, more power to you, but the entire nation shouldn’t be run this way.
Women need great access to reproductive healthcare and equity in every other aspect of their life.
We have a long way to go, and we’re currently going the wrong direction — backwards.
I’d like a system of healthcare similar to Canada’s. I want to be able to walk into any healthcare facility in the United States and get the same care no matter what, and I’d like to walk out knowing I’ve just received the best care in the world and on top of all that, I never receive a bill.
I’m sure that will trigger a whole lotta folks over Big Government or the Government being all up in our business. I know this troubles so many people and they’ll most likely never come around to having excellent healthcare for every American. But it’s what I want.
A healthy America is good for our country and our competitiveness on the world stage.
I was born and raised in California so I’m going to use it as an example of what I’d like to have.
In California we had the California State University System and The University of California System.
The University of California System is seen as a more prestigious system than the California State System.
My thought on the matter is that the California State System would be free for anyone to attend as well as all Junior Colleges in the the state. The Junior College System could be part of the Cal State system. One big happy family with your first two years spent at a JC and your final two spent at one of the fine Cal State Universities.
The system could also include trade schools because, let’s face it, not everyone is cut out to go to a university. I wasn’t, so I didn’t go to a university. I went to a trade schools that taught me nothing and was expensive. I don’t recommend doing that.
Perhaps you go right to grade school, perhaps you do two years at a JC then choose to go to trade school or on to university. Doesn’t matter. The point is we’d have a better educated population with choice. There are plenty of kids with the means, like me, that fail at the Junior College level, but would do perfectly fine in a trade school. It also means that those bright, talented, folks without the means can get a proper education and go on to do the things they always dreamed of.
Again, a better educated America is great America.
In particular there are a couple things I’d like to see.
1 All candidates are funded by the State or Federal Government 2 No more Lobbyists. Zero, zilch, nada
My hope with point number one is to remove the rich and powerful from the picture. Every candidate is given a pool of resources to run their campaign and equal television and other media resource time. No extra resources allowed.
Level playing field.
As for point number two. I’d love to see Senators and Representatives actually represent their constituency, not be influenced by rich and powerful corporations.
I’ve written about this before, but I’d love to see tighter restrictions and regulation around gun ownership, like; a national registration database, training, and licensing.
If those little beliefs make me a “Radical Lefty”, then I’m a Radical Lefty.
I’m sure I’ll think of other things I should’ve written about here and missed. I’ll save them for another post.
I’ll finish by saying I believe in people, I don’t want to control them.
Marge Greene: “We need to be the party of nationalism. I’m a christian, and I say it proudly - we should be christian nationalists.” pic.twitter.com/j3Iql05pE3
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 24, 2022
”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.”
Yes, that is the full text of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Marge Green is out of her mind, out of touch, doesn’t understand the basics of The Constitution, and is a danger to our Democracy.
She needs to go back home and stay. Vote her out.
Om: ”Okay, I didn’t mean to be so dramatic. Or use a clickbait headline, but in reality, what used to be Instagram is now dead.”
It sounds like a lot of folks are really disappointed with Instagram today. But what should you expect from Facebook? All of their products are built to leverage you, the user, as a revenue generation machine. They inject ads into your stream hoping for that click, they bombard you with people they think you should follow, and they chase every new trendy application related to images or video.
Instagram has turned into the worlds biggest A/B test. A playground for trends.
I still have my account but I stopped posting to it. I started posting my pictures to my blog. I mean, why not? It’s public, I don’t need to worry about Instagram bugging me to follow others, and there are no ads.
Bottom line, own your content.
Alberto Betella: ”One of the reasons why Anchor, and later Spotify, flourished in the podcasting industry is the open nature of podcasts. RSS was key to the success of podcasting because it addressed a potentially complex challenge with a very simple solution. RSS empowered the podcasting industry so everyone could focus on what really mattered: creating great content and building the best user experience.”
All the more reason places like Spotify shouldn’t call their short form audio stuff podcasting. As far as I know you can only get their premium audio through their app. Part of the joy of open formats is being able to use any application you’d like to discover and play your favorite podcasts.
I reminded myself of Bloom this morning. Such a great iOS app. It comes from a time when the platform was new and was full of promise and potential.
— Ken Kocienda (@kocienda) July 17, 2022
Sadly, looking back now, it’s clear that Apple has completely botched its longterm stewardship of iOS as a developer platform. https://t.co/wJV0NlXDLy
This is telling coming from one of the engineers on the original iOS development team. Heck, the man is responsible for the iOS keyboard I’m using to type this post.
Perhaps someday Apple will make sweeping changes to the App Store to cull out all the scammy apps and help real, bonafide, app developers flourish. You know, the indies, the folks that put so much care into the apps you love and use everyday.
htmx: ”REST must be the most broadly misused technical term in computer programming history.”
This was an eye opening read. I always understood websites and HTML as the prime example of REST. What I didn’t understand is to be truly REST means the format has to be self describing. Most developers receive data from an API in the form of JSON which are usually not self describing. Applications have built in knowledge of the thing they expect to receive and have code that understands how to use and display the data.
But it doesn’t matter to me if everything I’ve built isn’t REST. It’s completely reasonable and pragmatic to have services that return data specific to their intended use and have apps purpose built to display and interact with that data.
If we went around writing self describing JSON from every service we use we’re just building another form of web browser and we already have those.
Pragmatism wins.
MYTH: We don't have a solution to nuclear's "waste problem"
— Madi Hilly (@MadiHilly) July 21, 2022
REALITY: Nuclear waste isn't a problem. In fact, it’s the best solution we have to meeting our energy needs while protecting the natural environment!
Here's what you need to know:
This is a really neat thread about how nuclear fuel is stored.
Hawaii Reporter: ”Spam is considered solely lower class food in almost every other state. Ask any Hawai‘i local if they like spam, and he will either 1) give you stink eye and assume you’re a tourist for asking the question, or 2) at some point in his answer mention how good the 7-11 spam musubis or Zip-pac are.”
One could say we didn’t exactly have a lot of money when I was kid. We had a lot of ground beef and Spam, and I honestly still love the stuff to this day. You can put it in or on anything and it works. I like it with eggs, in breakfast burritos, on a sandwich, and prepared as Spam musubi at my favorite Hawaiian food joint.
The stuff is delicious, I’m moving to Hawaii. 🤤
CNN: ”California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill into law that allows private citizens to bring civil action against anyone who manufactures, distributes, transports or imports assault weapons or ghost guns, which are banned in the state.”
I guess if Texas can make terribly cruel laws around Womens health care California can do something similar (although not cruel) to help quell the gun violence we have in our nation.
Not to mention being a safe heaven for womens reproductive rights.
Governor Newsom for President. 🇺🇸
A Brief History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
— Paul Fairie (@paulisci) July 19, 2022
🧵
Super funny thread of the same people are lazy commentary through the years.
Each generation seems to think their generation was tougher, harder working, than the next.
Gen X is definitely the toughest, hardest working, of them all. That’s just fact. 🧌
The Verge: ”Welcome to this week’s edition of This Week in Chancery Court! Delaware’s moment in the sun continues as the fight between Elon Musk and Twitter shifts from fiery tweets… to fiery legal filings.”
It really does seem that Mr. Musk will have to either pay $54.20 per share or will face some monster penalty somewhere between $1B and $20B, depending on the difference in stock price from today to his $54.20 offer.
Talk about screw around and find out. Ouch. 🤕
P.S. musk.social is waiting for you.
Fistpump McRunpants. https://t.co/I6AaVtbBXX
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) July 22, 2022
Rachel Maddow is a hero of mine. She also drops some pretty good Dad jokes on occasion.
Oh, yeah, Josh Hawley is a coward and a caca-doo-doo-head.
Enjoy your coffee and have a wonderful weekend.
Pictures of the boys; Kolbe and King.
Kolbe is the yellow one. He’s five but acts like a puppy.
King is 10, I think, and is a distinguished gentleman.
They’re both Australia Shepard mix.
I’ll bet Ms Deer and her little spotted baby visit us tonight. 🦌
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.
Book bans are getting ugly and violent as conservative groups target educators online and harass them on their social media accounts.
— Tanya Basu (@tanyabasu) July 15, 2022
My story here:https://t.co/nAkeHk6pyu
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.
Netflix chooses Microsoft as an ad-tech partner for its coming ad-supported subscription service: https://t.co/XFdsL7rwHW
— Mary Jo Foley (@maryjofoley) July 13, 2022
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. ☕️
We’ve been waiting for these little aliens to hatch for a while.
I finally decided to pull the fern down and look inside. 🐦
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:
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.
Dear @twitter,
— Rob Fahrni (@Fahrni) July 10, 2022
Can you bring back RSS feeds for individual accounts and it would be really cool to have RSS for Lists.
Love,
The Internet
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.
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. ❤️
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.
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.”
With all that’s going on, the assault on the separation of church and state is not getting enough attention. https://t.co/z0G7CXAx9Z
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) July 2, 2022
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.”
I feel quite strongly that Johnson’s punishment should be to be locked in a cell with Blair and Clegg for the next 20 years with no parole. A triumvirate of political shitbags locked up to protect society.
— Marc Palmer (@marcpalmerdev) July 7, 2022
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. 🙏🏼
Two days ago, a woman in St. Louis, died from an eptopic pregnancy. The results of the SCOTUS Dobbs decision. So it begins!
— Ann Marie Barry (@AnnieMarieBarry) July 7, 2022
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've worked in DC and in and around politics most of my adult life. Here are a bunch of reasons I have concluded along the way I could never be a politician:
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 7, 2022
1.) I believe the US Constitution is in need of a big overhaul, is profoundly out of date in key ways & flawed in others.
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.
Sioux Falls, SD #sdwx pic.twitter.com/uH8hRKbA4G
— Nathen Erickson (@TwstdSkyStudios) July 6, 2022
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. 🤣