Busting out.

On Retirement

Here’s my retirement plan:

  1. Sell Home
  2. Buy RV
  3. Retire
  4. Travel
  5. Develop my own software for fun and profit 😁

The reality is, I believe, I won’t be able to retire. I may be able to semi-retire at some point but the full dream I’ve outlined above probably won’t happen unless some kind of miracle happens over the next 10 to 15 years.

Effortless Social Networks

Brain in a jarDave Winer: “A Twitter-like webservice at AWS. With better docs and a JavaScript API that doesn’t require developer to run a server (big deal). Effortless install on Digital Ocean.”

The post goes into more depth than the above blurb. I picked this bit because some of these things already exist.

There is an open source software called Mastodon that federates with other Mastodon server instances and is easy to host without running a server.

It also supports ActivityPub. Which will let you publish via a news feed. Manton Reese, founder of Micro.blog, has written how he made it possible for Micro.blog to appear as a Mastodon server so you could follow a Micro.blog timeline as if it were a native Mastodon timeline. It’s quite nice.

As far as running a Mastodon instance goes, I have one. I run it on a host called Masto.host for €5 — just over $5US — per month. If you’re interested you can visit Curmudgeon Cafe, my instance. I’m @fahrni@curmudgeon.cafe if you’re interested in following.

Mastodon is also an open source project.

Check out fediverse.info to locate an instance that’s right for you, if you don’t want your own. 😃

Back to Dave

I believe Dave could federate Scripting News with Mastodon using Activity Pub. It would, in essence, turn Scripting News into a Twitter-like instance. I’d be able to follow Scripting News from my Mastodon timeline. I’d like that.

I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever the Twitter Bluesky initiative comes up with will be over engineered and favor Twitter above all other considerations. I hope they’re considering open protocols. Mastodon is built on them as are many blogging tools and blogs.

More

In a recent episode of Pivot, Scott Galloway says projects like Mastodon, Truth Social, Parler, Gab, and GETTR have all failed.

I somewhat agree, if your only barometer is shareholder value.

Mastodon has succeeded if only to provide an open alternative to Twitter that allows anyone to join and/or create their own instance that can participate with the larger network.

Another interesting point: Mastodon was used by Gab and Truth Social as the underpinning of their respective networks. The technology works. I’d imagine both networks have made significant changes to their code bases and they’ve failed to execute as a business. That is not the fault of Mastodon.

Took a half day off to do some additional storm cleanup in the backyard.

Now to move that stack of wood to another location and get the lawn started.

A Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Predicts the Future — and What He Sees Is Concerning - Sway

Really great episode of Sway. Especially if you’d like to hear a compassionate, wealthy, man share his thoughts on the direction we’re headed.

I liked it. Feel free to disagree. 👍🏼

It never fails. When I get to the end of a project I get a little down and start thinking of my own little software projects. 🌾

Which makes me wish I could do those full time. 🕛

Every time.

My brain is weird. 🧠

End of an Era?

I don’t get too excited about WWDC any longer. I think the pandemic really did it in for me, perhaps it’s just an age thing. In the end I have so many things I’d like to achieve with my apps, that have nothing to do with the latest OS support, I just can’t pay too much attention.

I may change my mind at some point in the future but for now that’s where I am. Not excited about WWDC or any new OS features.

I submitted a request for WWDC’s in-person day, but now I’m much less interested in attending than I was when we recorded the last Core Intuition. I don’t think WWDC will ever return to what it was. 8 years ago I blogged about the “eras” of WWDC… Just feels over now.

A Good Day

Late Friday afternoon I got my every three month injections of cortisone in both knees. My knees were actually feeling better than they had in a really long time, but I got them anyway, because it’s the final set I can have prior to surgery to replace my left one in August.

This afternoon Kim and I spent time in her garden planting some new azaleas and pulling her plants out of the greenhouse.

I feel amazing. I had about a level two, maybe three, on my pain levels and only had a couple moments of sharp pain.

We finished up and I still feel great. I wish I could feel like this every day for the remainder of my life. 😀

Saturday Morning Coffee

Like usual I have so many things in my read later queue it was difficult to sort out what to share. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy sharing it. 🧡

Jerry Fahrni: “While most of my jobs have been forgettable, three stand out as my favorites. Why? Hard to say. Each had something unique to offer that I have been unable to replicate elsewhere. In no particular order, here they are:”

I love my brother. He’s one of the smartest, driven, most athletic, tough, loyal, people you’ll ever meet. He likes to win, whatever that means to him. It’s engrained in him. When he was a kid he was a great student, why? Because he enjoyed being at the top of his class. It was winning. No, he didn’t rub it in people’s faces. He’s also a pretty quiet man.

I could tell you story after story about Jay, or Jerry as is his birth name, but I just don’t have the patience to write that story today. Needless to say, I consider him quite accomplished, and I’m a fan.

This piece doesn’t surprise me. He’s very self deprecating, to a fault, but he honestly believes what he says about himself. So, if you can get past the opening parapraph, this is a really good piece about his favorite jobs over the past 25-years.

I also really appreciate his writing style and wish I could write as well as he does. It’s a true gift. I think he’d be happiest writing for a living. He’s written a ton of blog post about all kinds of things, but mostly about tech in the pharmacy space. He’s written a self published book about Pharmacy Clean Rooms and he has some unplublished works about other things, including his thoughts on building strength in the gym.

I’d love to see him get a job at a well respected newspaper or start writing fiction. He’s always been a great story teller. It’s why we always made him be Dungeon Master when we’d play D&D as teens. 😀

The Guardian: “Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?”

The entirety of this leak about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade has me in knots. I cannot believe it may actually happen, in 2022. Haven’t we had enough bad news since 2016? Guess not. The GOP has always been the party of cruelty. They want to control people at all costs.

If you don’t believe they’re coming for your rights, think again. They want an authoritarian government.

Steve Beschloss: “I don’t like liars. I don’t like them when they’re elected to political office. And I surely don’t like them when they lie to land a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.”

There are two things in life I cannot abide; Liars and Bullies. Five Supreme Court justices lied to get on the court. Five.

Ged Maheux: “Legal scholars are already predicting if the right to privacy goes, which Row is based on, then same sex intimacy, interracial marriage, contraception and more will also be made illegal in Republican controlled states.”

Yep. Ged understands what’s at stake. Take a bully that loves to lie and sprinkle in hate and being a control freak and what do you get? The GOP.

Jim Ray: “I’m probably just not as plugged as I perhaps once was, but it seems like we don’t get good writerly blogs any more. Maybe that’s more an extenstion of we just don’t get any good blogs anymore.”

I love reading Jim. He is a great writer and I wish he’d do more of it. Maybe with Social Networks becoming a bit of a shit show these days more folks will dust off their editors and write more on their personal blogs.

I love reading blogs so much I made my own feed reader. Shameless self promotion time: Get Stream. I think it’s pretty decent for a 1.0 release.

Barn Finds: “The Karmann Ghia was a sports car marketed by VW as a 2+2 coupe from 1955-74. Internally known as the Type 14, some of the mechanical bits of the Karmann Ghia was borrowed from the VW Beetle with styling by Carrozzeria Ghia (Italy) and hand-built bodywork by coachbuilder Karmann (Germany).“

I’m not really a car guy, but I could become one if I had the time, money, and room to work on old finds like this Karmann Ghia. I’ve always wanted to restore a car from the ground up. I’d also love to do a full electric conversion of an old rig.

puck.news: “No, these studios aren’t suddenly flipping the streaming switch to off, nor should they. Streaming remains the potential growth engine, and the future of the industry. But for certain titles, the streaming-vs-theatrical debate has taken a turn. Like maybe Pixar’s Turning Red should have generated a few hundred million bucks for Disney, and then become a huge hit on Disney+, just like Encanto did.”

Streaming has finally hit a bit of a snag. Netflix of all places has lost a lot of its value recently and it sounds like they’re going to pull back some of their production as a result. I personally don’t like the idea of it. I’d love to see higher quality content. Big movies. Better documentaries.

My favorite streaming platform as of this writing is HBO Max. They’ve given us great original content and have been running blockbuster movies before anyone else. The Batman being a prime example. Which, by the way, is better the second time. Loved it.

Tech Community - Microsoft: “Microsoft’s upgrade to Windows 11 is largely considered the smoothest we’ve ever had. The Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team was able to upgrade 190,000 employee devices in just five weeks. We learned a lot so, in this post, I’m sharing our learnings with you to help with your deployment journey.”

I don’t use Windows at all these days. It’s not that I hate it or anything, I actually think it’s a wonderful operating system with leadership that actually loves developers. Windows has carried around so much backward compatible baggage for so long I feel like Windows 11 could be the right choice for me going forward if I ever get around to installing it. I’d still love to write some cross platform C++ to underpin Stream so I can have iOS, Mac, and Windows versions. 😀

Tiny Apple Core

Y’all ready to see the bump Stream got when Musk announced he was buying Twitter!

Drumroll please. 🥁

Yep, I got that nice day of three downloads!

I am greateful folks do take the time to consider Stream. 🙏🏼

Shutting Down Feed Wrangler

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.Feed Wrangler: ”I will be shutting down Feed Wrangler next year, on March 1, 2023. This date is one year since the last member was billed for their subscription. No further membership fees will be charged to any existing members.”

One of the requests I’ve received for Stream is support for Feed Wrangler.

At some point I applied for API access and never heard back. I supposed I have my answer now.

Sorry to any Stream users interested in Feed Wrangler support.

I will say this, this is how you shut down a service. One year to move and a fully tested and ready to go way to send your data to the new service.

“Underscore” David Smith is a class act.

Holding hands with Kolby

Saturday Morning Coffee

I’m composing this at 5:30AM, flying down the highway, Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feel Good on the radio. We’re headed to Durham this morning to watch our granddaughter play soccer. I’m really excited to see her run around the field in a clump with all the other kids.

Where the heck is a Starbucks. I need coffee. ☕️

Richmond Times-Dispatch: “From sassy deviled eggs to a Duke’s heart with an arrow through it, guests can choose from a variety of pre-drawn Duke’s designs. These small and medium sized tattoos – intended for arms and legs only – would typically run $150.”

Not gonna lie. I was ready to do this. 🤣 Lucky for me they were already booked up. No Dukes Mayo tattoo for Rob.

Apple: “Genuine Apple parts and tools can now be purchased by US customers”

If you visit the website Apple setup for this you’re gonna think you’ve landed at some sort of scam site. Don’t worry, it’s not a scam. You’d think they’d have hosted it somewhere at apple.com, right?

The Daily Beast: “Although one senior U.S. official admitted to me (somewhat uneasily) that “Austin said the quiet part out loud,” it soon became clear that the U.S. was publicly willing to own the new goal of turning Russia’s unprovoked, brutal escalation of its ongoing eight-year war in Ukraine into a lasting and meaningful defeat for the Kremlin.”

I have this weird feeling Putin has some kind of terminal illness. Perhaps he just realizes he’s getting older. It seems like he wants to go out in a blaze of glory.

Hopefully that doesn’t include a nuclear cloud.

Daring Fireball: “I know that as a pundit, spending Apple’s money is easy, but UI Browser seems like a tool Apple should have purchased long ago”

I’ve heard the name Bill Cheeseman but never knew what he did. The man is calling it quits at age 79. Wow!

NPR: “He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. “In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons,” he wrote.”

I know some mighty fine people in Florida, but it’s also home of some really crazy people.

Yet another example of authoritarians losing their collective mind because the United States continues its march to become more liberal and they can’t cope with it.

Before you know it they’ll be burning books and recruiting young folks to be an army of tattle tales, complete with little arm bands signifying their importance.

The Ringer: “Saul Goodman had a toupee. He wore colorful suits and a pinky ring. And he drove a boat-sized Cadillac. On the surface, he was a cartoon attorney—the kind that may have even popped up in the ’90s on Mr. Show, the beloved sketch comedy series Odenkirk created with David Cross. Yet there was much more to Saul than that.”

Bob Odenkirk is an amazing actor. I really loved him in Nobody.

Dead State: “MyPillow CEO and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell wants you to know that he finally has the goods to prove the 2020 election was stolen which will lead to the election being overturned as soon as — this Thursday.”

Oh, it’s that nutter again. Dude, give up. There was no fraud.

Tiny Apple Core

The baby birdies behind the wreath on our front door are getting big. 😃

Also, look at all that poop on the door! 😂

Already missing my Exeter Coffee Co family, but happy to be home. 🧡

Who you callin’ outdated?

Red sock.

The Verge: “On Apple’s App Store Improvements page, the company says: “We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.” There isn’t a time stamp on the page, so it’s not immediately clear when Apple published or last updated the post.”

Earlier today on Twitter I replied to another iOS developer that I wasn’t upset about my app being removed from sale. I made it for myself and it works perfectly fine, thank you very much, but it doesn’t have a bunch of users. Folks that use it, seem to like it.

However, when I saw the paragraph from The Verge I pasted above, it kind of pissed me off.

Look, my app, Arrgly, isn’t pretty and doesn’t do much, but it works exactly as intended. Key here is “it works.”

When Apple says ”removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.” I wonder which of those Arrgly falls under? My guess is, it’s been deemed outdated? Outdated compared to what exactly?

Anywho, if you’re an Arrgly user I’m working on an update that makes it less goofy looking, but it will work the same as it ever did.

Home Sweet Home.

Kim and I laid our heads on our pillows at 4AM EST. Pooped out but really happy to be home.

SFO to IAD 🛫

Here we go.

Saturday Morning Coffee

Puck News: “While Zaslav and his team were quietly signaling their desire to pump the brakes on CNN+, sources familiar with the matter said, Kilar told Zucker and Morse—and, in the final weeks, just Morse—to proceed apace for launch in Q1 2022. He seemed to believe, some said, that if he could force CNN+’s launch before the merger, it might actually get a chance to fly.”

One. Month. In. Everyone involved must be reeling. Scott Galloway had a show on CNN+ and he’s been so quiet about the whole deal, which is really surprising given how vocal Professor Galloway can be.

UPDATE: Saw this after posting.

In the end there’s not much to tell, I suppose. One brand wanted a separate streaming service, the new parent didn’t.

Freaking Rectangle: “A typical coding interview starts out something like this: “Write a function that reverses letter order of words in a string.” Then for the next half hour or more, the candidate scratches out something on the white board (or a shared text document if they are lucky). This approach is weak for a number of reasons”

I really like this idea. Writing code on a whiteboard or in a text document is super stressful. I absolutely hate it, truth be told.

Actually looking at a hunk of code and doing what amounts to a code review feels really nice to me. When I interviewed at WillowTree, part of the process was reviewing a pull request. Knowing how you interact with other folks on your team through a code review can be very telling, not only from a technical perspective, but speaks loads about how you treat and interact with others.

Can you review a hunk of code and keep ego and opinion out of it, while teaching and showing empathy? That’s critically important. Building people up, not tearing them down, is a gift.

TL;DR - If you’re a dick in your PR comments, I don’t want to work with you.

TechCrunch: “Twitter says the idea to feature the Toolbox apps on its platform came from its discussions with the developer community. Developers told the company they wanted to improve users’ experience on Twitter, and, more critically, they wanted distribution so people were aware of their product.”

Twitter has a lot to make up for. In 2012 Twitter decided it hated developers of client applications.

This doesn’t feel like it’s built for client code as much as it is for folks who want to integrate into Twitter. That’s not a bad thing.

I hope they allow client developers to go deep with their new v2 API’s.

Raw Story: “On Thursday, writing for POLITICO, Kyle Cheney outlined how the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have already dropped “bombshells” about the events of that day and the state of U.S. democracy — even before they deliver their final report.”

We’re really gonna kill democracy. I have no idea how to fix all the damage done by the GOP and TFG.

TechCrunch: “Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, believes Apple’s App Store rules have hampered the company’s product roadmap, accusing the iPhone-maker of banning features from their app and generally not being friendly with the cryptocurrency industry.”

What could a phone need to make it better for crypto currency?

I can’t imagine Apple doing anything specifically for it until it is as accepted as the coin of the realm.

Building a special phone seems like a more likely outcome. Let them build one or two on top of Android and see how it goes.

Early days.

The Cut: “Fuentes, now 20, says she and Daisy De La O had been inseparable ever since they met as high-school freshmen in Huntington Park, just outside Los Angeles, where they grew up. By the time she posted the emotional montage, it had been more than three months since 19-year-old De La O had been found stabbed to death and wrapped in a roll of carpet outside her Compton apartment complex.”

Such a sad story. Our government institutions fail us and folks find a way.

Tiny Apple Core

SFO 🛬

Now, we wait. Flight to Dulles boards at 4:01PM.

By the time I arrive home it’ll be 12:45AM Sunday. Then a two hour drive home.

Looking forward to seeing Kim and sleeping in my own bed.

FAT to SFO 🛫

DIY Podcast

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.Bloomberg: “The Obamas are each willing to commit to appearing in an eight-episode program, which for some bidders isn’t enough of a commitment to justify a deal comparable to those for shows like “SmartLess,” “Call Her Daddy” and “My Favorite Murder.” Those shows appear weekly, or with a frequency to close to that, while Higher Ground’s programs featuring the Obamas have been limited series.”

This is kind of a no brainer to me. You don’t need much to produce your own podcast and sell ads.

Hire a couple people and get to recording. Seriously, it really is that simple.

A couple good mics, recording software for your Mac or PC, a quiet room, and something to talk about.

There. You have a podcast.

As for ads. I’d bet folks would line up to give you money for a few ad reads.

I can hear it now! President Obama doing a read for ED meds!

Instant hit.

Grandpa’s Airborne patch on his Army uniform.

Exeter Memorial Buildning

As youngsters my brothers and our friends would play football here. It’s Exeter’s Memorial Building.

It’s a fairly good sized flat field of green grass. It was perfect for tackle football with a Nerf.

The only downside was the caretaker. He hated for kids to use it for football and would run us off.

At the time the thought never crossed my mind but I’d bet some kids liked to destroy stuff. We didn’t. We just wanted a nice field to play football on.

I’m sitting there, now, writing this post. It’s a great place to relax on a bench and listen to the birds.